


Hospital 365

by JungMichan, Minew



Series: Hangang University Hospital [1]
Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Bullying, Depression, Drama, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Male Friendship, Medical Procedures, Medical Professionals, Mental Illness, Mentioned Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao, Mentioned Lu Han, Mentioned Wu Yi Fan | Kris, Original Character(s), Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Romance, Slice of Life, Surgery, graphic depictions of surgery, mentioned PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 341,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27965879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JungMichan/pseuds/JungMichan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minew/pseuds/Minew
Summary: In a high-stress work environment where only the strongest survive, nine hospital specialists must learn that it's okay for even doctors to struggle sometimes, and that friendship can be more healing than they think.
Series: Hangang University Hospital [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161380
Comments: 150
Kudos: 46





	1. August 27th

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is being cross-posted on AFF. 
> 
> **WARNINGS**
> 
> Please be aware that this is a realistic story set in a hospital and some of the medical scenes include graphic descriptions of medical procedures, surgery, major illnesses and injuries, blood, bodily fluids and functions, patient death, etc. This story also contains and references potentially triggering themes such as abuse, domestic violence, homophobia, eating issues, anxiety, panic attacks, self-harm, and attempted suicide.
> 
> **MEET THE DOCTORS**
> 
>   * Kim Minseok: Emergency physician, section chief
>   * Zhang Yixing: Oncologist, attending
>   * Kim Joonmyun: Cardiothoracic surgeon, fellow
>   * Byun Baekhyun: Plastic surgeon, fellow
>   * Park Chanyeol: Paediatrician, attending
>   * Kim Jongdae: Obstetric surgeon and gynaecologist, attending
>   * Do Kyungsoo: Radiologist, attending
>   * Kim Jongin: Orthopaedic surgeon, fellow
>   * Oh Sehun: Dermatologist, attending
> 

> 
> We hope you enjoy the story!! 
> 
> ~ Co-authors Minji and Michan ~

* * *

The cafeteria is as bleak as always, with its bare, cream-colored walls and the big plastic tables scattered around the large room. A few tables are occupied, but Minseok is there early for dinner, so he has no trouble finding a table to himself. Working in the Emergency Department has always been his passion - he thrives in the chaos and the fast pace - but it also has its drawbacks, such as never knowing when you’re going to get a chance to eat. After unintentionally losing fifteen pounds in his first three months of ED residency, Minseok has learned to eat whenever he has a quiet moment, regardless of what time of day or night it is. 

He has just sat down with a bowl of jajangmyun in front of him when his phone rings. At first he fumbles for his work phone, but when it shows a blank screen he realizes it’s his private phone ringing. When he sees the caller, his heart sinks. For a brief moment he considers giving into the temptation to let it ring out - she can’t exactly blame him for not picking up if she calls him while he’s on shift - but ignoring her won’t work forever. Better to get it over with.

He answers the call and presses his phone against his ear with his shoulder. One hand holds his bowl steady while the other mixes the noodles into the black bean sauce with his chopsticks.

”What do you want?”

“I just wanted to remind you that your daughter turns ten this Saturday and she wants her father at her birthday party,” his ex-wife says.

Minseok drops his chopsticks onto the table with a clatter. This Saturday. The Saturday he’s just agreed to work an extra shift on. He only just manages not to groan aloud. He’d remembered Nayoung’s birthday this year and even bought her a gift already, but the fact that he’d promised to attend her party had completely slipped his mind. Now he’s going to have to rearrange his work schedule for an afternoon of hanging awkwardly around in a house full of hyperactive ten-year-old girls and trying not to mind the disapproving looks all their mothers will be giving him from the corners of their eyes.

“I know,” he answers quickly, but Jangmi hears right through him.

“You forgot, didn’t you? For God’s sake, Minseok! You will be there, right?” 

“Of course I’ll be there! I promised, didn’t I?” He picks up his chopsticks and gathers up a clump of noodles, holds them a couple of inches above the bowl, and wonders if she’ll chew his ear off if he puts them in his mouth while she’s talking to him.

“God help me if you’ve taken an extra shift or something. Nayoung will be heartbroken if you don’t show up and I’m the one who’ll have to deal with the aftermath. Don’t do this to me, Minseok.” 

Minseok closes his eyes and tries to drown out the cafeteria sounds. “I’ll be there, I’ll be there. Trust me, would you?” 

She sighs heavily. “If only I could.”

He’s interrupted by his pager beeping. He hasn’t even gotten to take a single bite of his meal. His stomach grumbles, protesting the denial of the food it’s been anticipating, but there’s nothing he can do now. He drops the noodles back into the bowl and shoves his chair back with a screech. 

“Gotta go,” he says. He pauses, then promises one more time before he hangs up. “I’ll be there.” 

He abandons his uneaten jajangmyun and walks quickly back to the emergency department, getting there just as a couple of paramedics wheel in a teenage girl strapped to a spineboard. He pushes the phone call out of his mind with a mixture of guilt and relief. Trying to communicate with his ex-wife stresses him out a hell of a lot more than assessing trauma patients. The noise of the ED engulfs him, chaotic in the best way possible - the way that demands every scrap of his attention and leaves him no time or energy to worry about anything else. 

When he’s shunted a couple of nurses off in opposite directions to deal with less urgent patients, he jogs over to the trauma patient on the spineboard. The resident has already started check-up and quickly relays the paramedic’s report to Minseok. 16-year-old female, thrown from a horse, landed on her right side. She screams whenever anybody touches her right shoulder but is otherwise quiet. Tears silently flow down her cheeks, but she’s biting her sobs back, obviously trying hard not to show her pain. 

Her anxious mother is told to wait outside the treatment room and a nurse closes the door so people can’t look in. Her clothes are cut off amidst tearful protests about her favourite sweater, and blankets are placed on top of her body to keep her warm. When the resident has finished her assessment she turns to Minseok.

“The patient is ABC stable with a GCS score of 15, awake and alert. She probably fractured her right shoulder based on the pain in the area. It crinkles a little on the right side of her chest when she inhales deeply, that’s a possible pneumothorax. She doesn’t have any back or neck pain. The FAST scan is negative.”

Minseok nods and turns his gaze back to the girl. The phlebotomist has turned up and is about to take a blood sample. The girl’s silent tears have slowed and she’s focusing on the nurse instructing her to breathe while watching out for the shoulder, but he can detect a bit of panic in her eyes. She won’t understand what the resident has just told him and he can tell that she’s worried she’s gotten badly hurt. Minseok sends her a reassuring smile, but she’s too focused on the nurse’s instructions and her breathing to see him.

“What do you suggest we do?” he asks the resident.

“Full CT scan to make sure there’s nothing we’ve missed?” 

Minseok nods. 

“Switch her onto one of our spineboards so the paramedics can get back on the road, and call radiology,” he instructs before leaving the room to attend to the next patient. 

\---

Yixing's polished black shoes clip briskly on the linoleum floor as he walks down the hallway to the oncology ward. His crisp white coat swishes, his shirt is pressed to perfection, and his dark brown hair is stylishly messy. The doors slide open for him and he’s given a rushed greeting by a busy young nurse. He greets her back and turns left towards the chemo unit. He’s on his way to see a patient who has been in his care since her diagnosis, one Yixing likes particularly well. She’s funny, her eyes sparkle with hope and happiness, and she never lets it show that she’s dying. They haven’t talked about death in particular but only because she never seems to want to. Every time he tries to bring it up, she stubbornly closes her eyes and says “I’m sleeping”. Yixing has gotten the message. 

She’s half asleep in a chair, a plastic bag for vomiting held loosely in her hand with the chemo slowly feeding into her veins from an IV drip. He gently taps her shoulder as he sits down in front of her.

“Oh,” she jumps awake, then smiles when she sees him. “Hello, Dr. Zhang! What have I done to deserve this visit?” 

Yixing shakes his head fondly and chuckles. 

“How are you doing, Sooyoung?” he asks instead of answering her question.

She shrugs and nods towards her IV drip. “Getting chemo.” 

Yixing’s smile falters as he looks at her. Sooyoung notices and lights up in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Don’t look like that, Dr. Zhang. It’s my only choice, right?” Yixing nods. “Besides, it’s not your fault. I know you’re helping me, so don’t feel bad.”

She smiles and looks at the IV bag to gauge how much she has left. Then she pales. Yixing automatically reaches out to grab a plastic bag, but Sooyoung is faster and holds her own bag to her mouth as she vomits into it. Watching her nauseous and vomiting makes Yixing’s heart sink a little. If there was a way to remove chemo side-effects, he would be on them in a heartbeat. Sooyoung takes a few deep breaths when she’s done and hands the bag to Yixing’s waiting hands as he rubs her shoulder. 

“Do you need a couple of tissues?” He’s already leaving her chair even as he speaks, throwing away the bag and grabbing her some tissues from the nurse’s station. Sooyoung looks at him with teary eyes when he returns and gratefully accepts the tissues.

“Ugh,” she complains and rests her head back against the chair. “I swear I would’ve chosen radiation over this if I could.” 

Yixing knows she would, but he can’t justify radiation on her. The cancer has spread too far. 

“Um, Dr. Zhang?” Sooyoung glances at the almost-empty chemo bag. “I was wondering...can you push my next session a little further back?” She twists her fingers together, looking up at him with hope written all over her too-pale face. “My friends have invited me on a camping trip and I’d love to go.” 

He shakes his head reluctantly. “Sorry, Sooyoung. I can’t do that. We need to stick to the scheduled timing or the cancer cells get an opportunity to grow. They can also get more resistant to treatment.”

Sooyoung’s lip trembles. “But it would only be a week,” she says. She sounds like she’s whining, but Yixing understands.

“I know, but the treatment schedule is really important. You remember how I explained about chemotherapy suppressing your immune system? You’re more at risk of picking up an infection, and if you got sick while you were on the trip, we’d have to delay the chemo again until you were well enough to receive your next dose. I just can’t risk it.”

She’s hanging her head now, and he sees a couple of teardrops splash onto the knees of her jeans, though she doesn’t make a sound. Heart sinking, he sits back down on the chair in front of her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees so that their faces are level. “Don’t cry,” he says gently. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to miss out. I’d say yes if I could.”

She looks up to meet his eyes, tears trembling on her lashes. “If I get all my treatments on schedule,” she whispers, “then I can go camping when I’m better, right?”

He feels his heart twist even as he manages to smile, wishing he could answer that question the way he wants to. “Why don’t you ask some of your friends over to watch a movie instead?” he suggests.

She rubs her hand across her eyes and perks up a little. “Well…I guess I could ask mom to put up our tent in the lounge? We could lie in it and watch Into the Wild.”

“Perfect!” Yixing exclaims. “Nearly as good as the real thing. Actually it’s better. You know how many bugs end up in a tent when you’re camping? Creepy-crawlies everywhere.” He makes his fingers crawl spider-like up her arm and laughs when she squeals that it tickles.

“I’ll ask Joohyun and Seulgi over. We could toast marshmallows over candles instead of a campfire!" Yixing listens patiently as Sooyoung starts to chatter about ideas for the sleepover, happy to see that her tears have dried up.

“I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” She suddenly puts her hand over her mouth and grins at him from behind it. “Sorry. Mom says I could talk the hind leg off a donkey.”

Yixing laughs at the expression. “Well, you talked all the way through the rest of your dose.” He points at the empty bag and smiles when she claps her hands together in delight. He calls the nurse over to release her from the IV line in her arm and leaves her, heading back towards the office where he has some outpatient appointments scheduled. As he walks away, the fond smile he’d been wearing while she chattered about her plans fades, and a nurse passing him in the opposite direction is surprised by the sadness she sees in his usually cheerful face. 

When Yixing thinks back to his 17-year-old self, the quiet, studious teenager who had decided he wanted to become a doctor, he knows he hadn’t really understood at that time what he was getting himself in for. He’d been sure he’d thought it all through. The idea of years more study hadn’t daunted him – he was good at schoolwork and found biology and chemistry fascinating enough to study far more than was required to simply pass his exams. A future filled with long working hours and sleepless nights seemed more of a positive than a negative – as a lifelong insomniac, working graveyard shifts made the draggingly long nights a heck of a lot more interesting. He’s never been squeamish, so the idea of blood, vomit, pus, and all the other interesting things that could come out of a sick or broken human being hadn’t fazed him in the slightest. Even that stuff has its bright side - he’s developed an instinct for telling when a patient undergoing radiation or chemotherapy is about to vomit all over his pressed slacks and polished shoes, and he’s honed a pretty mean dodge reflex to go with it. All those things considered, Yixing is a pretty good fit for his chosen career.

But one thing about being a doctor that hadn’t penetrated into the confidence of his teenage self, every now and then still rears its ugly head. He can go months if he’s lucky without tripping over his personal obstacle. But when that obstacle does crop up, Yixing always ends up falling flat on his face.

This time, his stumbling block is Park Sooyoung. Every time he looks at her, he knows it is only a matter of time before he ends up hitting the floor with a hard and painful smack. Park Sooyoung is going to die of cancer, and Dr. Zhang Yixing, her attending oncologist, is going to lose a patient. The knowledge of what is to come hangs over him like a distant cloud on the horizon, slowly lumbering its way over the landscape, growing in size and ferocity, until it finally, eventually, eclipses the sun and drenches him in a sheet of cold rain. The Sooyoung-cloud is months away, yet. But it is coming.

“How do you do it?” He asks Songmi that afternoon. They’re in the cafeteria on the ground floor, rather than in Yixing’s more private office on the oncology floor, because his wife is an emergency department nurse and more likely to be urgently called away than Yixing, whose cancer patients tend towards slow declines rather than sudden crises. They’re sitting side-by-side rather than facing each other, because having a whole table between them seems far too much. Side-by-side they can push their chairs close together, and Yixing can wrap his arm around her while she eats, hugging her into the Songmi-sized space that exists at his side and always feels empty when she’s not occupying it.

“How do I do what?” She asks, glancing up from her rice and fried chicken. 

He bites his lip, a tell-tale sign of distress. He didn’t really mean for those words to come out. He doesn’t like to worry her. But it’s too late now she’s looked at him. She knows all too well the one thing that can make the light in her happy-go-lucky husband’s eyes go dim.

“Who is it?” She puts down her chopsticks.

“Her name is Sooyoung. She’s only 18 and she’s metastasized all through her lungs and pelvic bones. Songmi, she’s such a sweet kid, and all I can do is drip bucketloads of toxic chemicals into her for the next few months, and she’ll die anyway.”

“Oh, darling.” Songmi wraps her arms around him and he pulls her close, feeling the warmth of her small, familiar body. He rests his chin on her head and feels the vibration of her words in her chest as she speaks. “It’s not your fault. You’re doing the best you can.”

“I know,” Yixing says. Knowing he’s doing his best doesn’t change how he feels, of course, and he knows she understands that. Her presence is a comfort, though. Holding her close makes his heart ache a little less.

“I wish I could do something to help.” She pulls back a little to gaze into his eyes. 

He manages a smile, though perhaps it’s not quite as bright as usual. “You help just by being here.”

She smiles back, and he reaches around her, picks up her chopsticks and grabs a piece of chicken. “Open wide,” he teases, and she opens her mouth to let him pop it in. She closes her eyes and makes a blissful humming noise as she chews. 

“Is it that delicious?”

“Mm-hmm,” she swallows and opens her eyes. “Not as delicious as you, though,” and she jumps up out of her chair to give him a quick kiss right on the lips. 

“Songmi! Behave,” he scolds, then looks around with his eyes stretched wide. “Isn’t that Kim Minseok watching?”

She glances over her shoulder at the mention of her boss, and he takes the opportunity to lean down and blow into her ear. She squeals, and he kisses the top of her ear quickly.

“Got you.”

“You little ratbag,” she scolds, unable to hide her laughter. He laughs too. She always calls him “little”, as if he wasn’t three years older and a full foot taller than her. Little ratbag when he’s being cheeky. Little panda when his dark circles are down to his knees after two sleepless nights followed by a graveyard shift. Little ray of sunshine when he can’t stop beaming because a patient’s in remission. 

“Stop distracting me, I only have three minutes of my break left,” she says, grabbing her spoon and taking a huge mouthful of rice. 

“Are you off at the shift change?” He asks, and she nods, her mouth too full to speak. His day is officially over, but if they’re working at the same time, he likes to wait for her to be done. He can do some research in his office for a few hours and pick her up from the ED at 7 pm. It’s worth staying at work for two hours longer for her company on the bus ride home. 

He walks her into the ED, where she’s immediately swooped upon by the constantly frazzled-looking ED chief and pointed towards a moaning patient. He nods politely to Minseok, who doesn’t notice, and turns away. As he walks towards the elevator to go back to his office, he decides to go through the latest edition of the Chinese oncology journal and see if there’s any new ideas for making chemo side-effects a bit more bearable. 

\---

The subway car is crammed full with commuters heading home after work. Kyungsoo finds a small gap near the doors to stand in, and reaches up to grip one of the hanging grey handles above his head. The doors close and he rocks slightly with the accelerating surge as the train plunges into its tunnel. He catches sight of his own face reflected in the window against the darkness. A pair of tired, deep-set eyes stare back at him, and he looks away.

He’s been putting off visiting his parents for some time now. It’s not hard to find excuses. Radiology is always run off their feet, every department always wanting imaging for every little thing, even stupid things that they ought to know he can’t possibly diagnose via imaging, or that could easily be cleared clinically if they could actually be bothered. It’s such a waste of time and resources, but what can he do?

The residents are all so sure of themselves, so sure they can’t possibly be wrong, so sure that checking criteria is for plebians, and especially sure that they know far more about which patients need radiology than an actual radiologist. He’s no good at standing up to residents.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s no good at standing up to anyone, and that includes his parents.

His wandering thoughts take him off the subway, up the three flights of concrete steps to street level, and into the street-lit night. It’s a ten-minute walk to his parents' apartment from the station. He wasn’t late when he got off the subway, but when he finally arrives, he realizes he’s walked too slowly, his legs unconsciously obeying his mind’s reluctance, so it’s at five minutes past six that he keys in the code and pushes open the door.

“Kyungsoo!” his mother cries, appearing from the kitchen and nearly running to the door. She brings with her the scents of home cooking, and he recognizes the smells of his favourite dishes. She wraps both her arms around him tightly, then stretches up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He hugs her back, trying not to be too stiff. He’s not one for physical contact, even from his mother, but she’s obviously overjoyed to see him, and he can’t hurt her feelings by pulling away the way he wants to. A twinge of guilt pinches at him. Has it really been that long?

“Oh darling, look at your face, you’re so pale!" She steps back to fuss over him, clicking her tongue. “You work far too hard. Come in, dinner’s all ready.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. He slips off his shoes and hangs his coat by the door before putting on the slippers she’s left out for him and following her inside. “The trains…”

She’s not listening, busying herself in the kitchen, taking dishes from a warming oven. His father is already sitting at the head of the dining table, the Economic Observer occluding his face.

“Hi, dad,” Kyungsoo says, and his father lowers the newspaper long enough to briefly meet his eyes and give him a nod. That’s as good as he’s going to get, Kyungsoo knows, and honestly, he’s far more comfortable with that than his mother’s fussing and petting.

He helps his mother put the dishes on the table, and when they’re all seated his father finally puts aside the newspaper. Though it’s been months since he ate with his parents, Kyungsoo automatically folds his hands and waits for his mother to say grace. It’s an ingrained habit inextricably linked with sitting at this table, in this room, his father on his right, his mother opposite.

His mother says a few lines about gratitude, which he doesn’t really listen to, and finishes with, “and Heavenly Father, we thank thee for bringing our son to us to share our meal today.” She opens her eyes and nods at Kyungsoo. She wants him to say something. Kyungsoo cringes internally. Even only in front of his parents, he feels so awkward at times like these. God knows what would happen if she ever made him do this when they had guests over. He’d probably melt into an oozing puddle of embarrassment and drip onto her nice cream carpet.

“We thank thee, Lord, for these thy gifts,” he mumbles. It’s his go-to prayer. He’s not creative enough to think of original ones like his mother does. Finally they start to eat, and his mother asks him how work is going.

“Fine,” he says. “Busy, as always.”

“Have they put you up for a promotion yet? As hard as you work, you ought to be the radiology department chief. I don’t know why they’re overlooking you. You should stand up for yourself more.”

Kyungsoo stifles a sigh. He’s pretty sure he knows why she’s asked this, and sure enough, her next topic turns to what all the children of the ladies from the church are doing. Kyungsoo knows who some of these children are - the ones who, like him, were dragged to Sunday school for most of their childhood and adolescence, though he’s not seen most of them in over a decade.

“You remember Sekyung, don’t you? Kim Minha’s little boy? Well, he’s just been made managing editor of the entertainment department at the Korea Herald! Isn’t that something?”

Kyungsoo nods. This is where she’s gotten the idea that he needs a promotion. She’d love to brag to Kim Minha that while Sekyung may be a managing editor for a newspaper, her son is chief of radiology at a big hospital.

“And you’ll never guess what,” his mom continues. “Remember Lee Taehee who got married last year? She’s just had her babies – twins! Two girls! Isn’t that lovely!”

“Mmhmm,” Kyungsoo says vaguely, remembering Lee Taehee as a shy teenager who never said more than two words to him in all the six years they were in the same Sunday school class. He can’t imagine her married with twin babies. It just seems so strange. Now that he’s thirty, more and more people his age are marrying and having kids, but Kyungsoo just doesn’t get it. He knows it must be appealing, or people wouldn’t do it – but _why_ is it appealing? What is it about having a relationship that’s so attractive?

“Isn’t Taehee’s mother lucky,” his mother sighs. “Imagine. Two grandchildren at once!” She darts a look at Kyungsoo. “Have you met anyone special lately, Kyungsoo? Anyone you’d like to tell me about?”

Kyungsoo looks down at his plate. Here it comes.

“No,” he says, and takes a huge mouthful of rice so that she can’t make him talk more.

“Honestly, darling, you’re already thirty years old. It’s time you settled down...” and the familiar, dreaded lecture begins. Kyungsoo chews his endless mouthful as she tells him all about how it’s not good to be alone, that he needs someone to look after him, that if he’s not careful he’ll end up a bachelor for life, that all the nice girls will be taken. He nods vaguely at each point. He doesn’t see what’s so bad about being a bachelor for life. It sounds much better to him than all the baggage attached to a relationship.

It’s the part about the grandchildren that really gets to him. His mom had been unable to have any more children after Kyungsoo, and he’s her only hope. He can see how much she longs to have children about. He knows she’d be a wonderful grandmother. She’s always been so affectionate, and it’s really not her fault that her only son takes after his reserved, undemonstrative father. But how can he give her grandchildren when the idea of getting close to a woman, let alone the sexual intercourse that is a fairly vital part of creating children, makes him feel like running for the hills?

His phone rings, and he answers it like a drowning man who’s just been tossed a lifebelt. 

“Sorry, mom. They need me in the ED. I have to go.” 

And he does, leaving his mother staring sadly at his half-finished meal and empty chair.

Back at the hospital, Kyungsoo has to squeeze past the two X-ray technicians, one resident, two interns, one orderly and three nurses who have all somehow crammed themselves into the small operator room behind the CT scanner to get to his office. It’s loud and full of the accumulated stress vibes of too many people trying to work in too small a space, and after the less-than-successful dinner with his parents he’s finding it hard to concentrate.

He’s haunted by thoughts of disappointing his mother, and they’re distracting him from the scan in front of him. He gets up and shuts the door to block out some of the noise. Then he closes his eyes, breathes in the silence, and pushes the worries away. When he opens his eyes again, he’s able to focus on the grey-tone scans on the screens in front of him instead of the ghosts of children that will never be. 

He scrolls up and down through the pictures, then changes to the lung window and assesses the damage to the lungs. Considering the multiple broken ribs and pneumothorax, he’s surprised the patient has energy to whimper about her shoulder. Changing back to the abdomen window, he looks over the shoulder injury and isn’t surprised to see that she’s fractured it, as well as her collarbone. She must’ve hit the ground pretty hard.

Kyungsoo leans back in his chair and stares at the different shades of grey on his computer screen for a minute. You couldn’t pay him enough to get on a horse; he’s seen far too many bad injuries after a fall from one. They might not be mean creatures, but they’re stupidly big and kind of scary all the same, even without the injuries a fall can result in. This patient has gotten off lightly compared to some he’s seen.

The scan hasn’t revealed any other injuries outside of her fractures and pneumothorax, and Kyungsoo considers not bothering to call the attending in and instead just describing his findings on the computer system so he can leave the office without having to actually talk to anyone, but eventually decides against it. 

His phone feels heavier than usual in his hands as he reluctantly dials the number for the attending ED physician, but when it’s picked up by Kim Minseok he breathes a sigh of relief. The section chief is always friendly and to-the-point, despite being a little messy, and he never gives Kyungsoo any grief about why he’s done what he’s done and why he’s changed exams to more relevant ones, unlike the residents.

“Did you see Ryeo Miyoung earlier? Yeah, the trauma patient. You should come here and see the scan for yourself,” he says into the phone and when Minseok agrees to stop by, he hangs up and leans back in his chair again. He could quickly describe what he’s seen, but he’s in no rush. The ED doctors will have already started treating the obvious injuries.

Five minutes later, there's a knock on the door to his office and it opens before he has a chance to answer. Minseok gives him a tired smile. As always, he looks a little ruffled. His hair looks like he’s run his fingers through it without realising, making it stand up, and his stethoscope is almost falling out of its pocket. 

“See anything we have to act on immediately?” Minseok asks as he closes the door behind him and Kyungsoo shakes his head.

“I’m guessing you already sent her to the OR for the pneumothorax. Maybe you should consult orthopedics for her fractures, her shoulder is a 3-part fracture that’s anteriorly dislocated. It doesn’t look good. The collarbone is a midshaft fracture; it might need a plate or screw.” He scrolls with his mouse so he can show Minseok exactly where the shoulder and collarbone is fractured. “It must’ve been a lot of impact to do that damage on such a young body.” 

Minseok looks at the grey tones on the computer. “How many fractures on her ribs do you count?”

Kyungsoo scrolls a little further down and points to a few cracks on her ribs. “Ribs three through twelve are fractured, ribs seven through nine in multiple places. I’m guessing she hit something hard when she landed.” 

Minseok looks at his screen for a couple of seconds before he turns to Kyungsoo and sends him a tired smile. “Thanks.” 

“It’s my job,” Kyungsoo shrugs. Minseok chuckles, then makes a grab for his stethoscope as it topples out of his pocket, snatching it from the air with lightning reflexes. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “You know, if you put that thing deeper in your pocket, you wouldn’t have to keep replacing it when you break it every three months.” 

Minseok shakes his head fondly and opens the door behind him, stethoscope still in hand. 

“You’re on call, right? Go home and get some sleep. Maybe you won’t get called again tonight.”

“Minseok, you just jinxed it!” Kyungsoo complains. The ED section chief laughs and raises a hand in farewell, leaving Kyungsoo alone in front of his computer screen. The faint hum of the computer is the only sound in the small office. He should leave like Minseok suggested, but in the quiet his thoughts drift back to dinner with his parents. It’s too late to go back and be lectured, but that doesn’t mean the thoughts and the words have disappeared.

He sighs deeply and shakes his head to shake the thoughts away. He gets up, sticks his head into the break room to wish the X-ray technicians a good evening on his way out, and heads home.


	2. September 7th

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Jongdae looks up from the breakfast rice porridge he’s dishing into five bowls – two adult-sized, three kid-sized and decorated in turn with elephants, pandas and giraffes - as his eldest daughter comes flying into the kitchen. She’s only wearing her vest and knickers, and she’s clutching her silver and blue Princess Elsa dress in both arms. He doesn’t even have a chance to ask her what she’s doing before she cannons straight into his legs, crushing the Elsa dress against him. He staggers sideways a little and grabs the counter to balance himself. At six years old, Chorong isn’t exactly big, but the way she hurls herself around at top speed all the time has caused Jongdae more than a few bruises.

“Whoa,” he laughs. “Slow down, kiddo. What is it?”

“I want to wear my Elsa dress,” Chorong clings to his legs, gazing up at him with her best pleading expression. “Please, daddy? Please can I wear it?”

“What about your school uniform?” Jongdae picks up the bowls he’s filled for himself and his wife and turns to go and put them on the kitchen table. Chorong slides down his leg to sit on his foot, giggling as he drags her across the floor. It’s one of her favourite games, but she’s getting big enough now that when she does this, walking is a serious challenge.

“Uniform is boring,” Chorong says. “Minah said she’s going to wear her Anna dress today and I want to wear my Elsa dress so we can be sisters. Please, daddy? Pleeeease?”

Jongdae step-drags his way back to the counter and wonders vaguely what the repercussions are for six-year-olds if they break the dress code. Detention? A hundred lines of I must not impersonate royalty while at school? He smiles at the thought of any teacher trying to get Chorong to sit still enough for long enough to write even ten lines, let alone a hundred. Besides, he reassures himself, punishments at the local primary school are bound to be a lot less severe than they were at the elite prep school his uncle sent him to.

“What did mommy say?” he asks. He rather suspects that the reason Chorong is here, asking him, is because his wife has already forbidden her to wear the dress. Chorong may be only six, but she knows all too well which of her parents is the pushover, and Ahreum has explained to him several times that he mustn’t let the kids do things she’s already forbidden. She says it’s not good for their discipline. Jongdae knows it’s a good thing that Ahreum does most of the raising of their three children. If it was left up to him, he’d end up spoiling them rotten. He just can’t resist it when they turn their puppy-dog eyes on him. He’d give them the moon if they asked him for it.

“Mommy said….mommy said…” Jongdae hides a smile as his daughter fights an obvious battle with her conscience. He balances the three kid-size bowls of rice porridge in his hands and hauls her back across the floor.

“She said no, right?” he prompts. “Chorong, we already talked about this. Why are you not supposed to ask me anything mommy already said no to?”

“Because mommy and daddy want to always agree, and it’s wrong to try and trick you,” Chorong says reluctantly.

“Exactly.” Jongdae pats her head. “Now go and put your uniform on. You can be Elsa when you get home from school.”

“Daddy!” Chorong picks herself up from his foot and clutches the crumpled dress to her chest. “Don’t tell mommy I asked you, okay?”

Jongdae can’t help chuckling. She knows she’ll be scolded if Ahreum finds out she tried to play them off against each other. “Okay, I won’t tell her – if you’re a good girl and go help mommy get Bodeul and Mari ready.”

“Okay!” Chorong beams at him and runs out of the kitchen, her small bare feet pattering on the polished wooden boards. Jongdae shakes his head fondly after her and starts getting out the side dishes and cutlery. It’s a family rule to eat meals together whenever they can, though it’s often impossible when Jongdae is on call. Though Jongdae loves his job and would happily work more hours than he already does, he vowed when Chorong was born that he wouldn’t let his kids suffer from an absent parent the way he did. So far, he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job.

He has time to get his four-year-old son, Bodeul, to consume most of his porridge by playing “train-goes-into-the-tunnel” with the spoon before his phone vibrates with the recurring alarm telling him he needs to leave the house.

“Darling, you didn’t eat,” Ahreum protests as he stands up. Jongdae flashes her a reassuring smile. It’s more important that Bodeul eats. His son is small for his age and his fussy eating habits aren’t helping.

“Don’t worry, I’ll grab something from the cafeteria later,” he says as he shrugs into his jacket and puts his arms through the straps of his backpack, but Ahreum is already standing up. She ignores two-year-old Mari’s fussing at losing her mother’s attention and quickly scrapes his portion of porridge into a plastic container.

“Turn around,” she instructs, and he lets her unzip his backpack and tuck the container inside. When she's zipped him back up he turns around to give her a quick goodbye kiss.

“Me too! Me too!” Chorong shrieks from the table.

“I was going to,” Jongdae laughs. He hurries back to the table and gives each of his children a kiss, wipes the grains of smeared porridge off his lips, and waves goodbye.

He arrives at the hospital at the same time as Park Chanyeol.

“Dr. Park, what’s up,” Jongdae says as the doors swoosh open for them.

“Dr. Kim, that would be the sky.” The tall paediatrician gives him the goofy grin Jongdae knows so well and slaps his shoulder in friendly greeting. They’ve hung out since they were in the same year of pre-med, and though they ended up in different specialties, working at the same hospital means they’ve been able to keep their friendship going strong through the years, where many of Jongdae’s old friendships have fallen by the wayside due to family responsibilities and conflicting work schedules.

“Ew, something’s oozing,” Chanyeol tells him, grabbing the top handle of his backpack and swinging him around by it to inspect it. “What have you got in there?” He leans closer and sniffs. “Smells a lot better than it looks.”

“Oh no.” Jongdae wriggles out of his straps, unzips his backpack, and finds that yes, as he suspected, the lid has come off the plastic container and coated the inside of his backpack and his folders in a sloppy rice-porridge mess.

“What is that?” Chanyeol peers into the backpack with interest.

“Breakfast,” Jongdae says sadly. “Or it was.” Now he’s going to have to clean his backpack and all his things, and he really doesn’t have the time. He grins suddenly and holds the bag out to Chanyeol. “Want some? There’s plenty to share.”

“Sure,” Chanyeol says. “Pass me a spoon.”

“Who needs a spoon? Just stick your head in,” Jongdae suggests. “You’ll look great in a nosebag.”

“What’s a nosebag?” Byun Baekhyun pops up in front of them, bright-eyed and radiating his usual air of barely contained hyperactivity.

“Horses eat out of them,” Jongdae tells him. “Since Chanyeol eats like a horse, I prepared this for him.”

Baekhyun glances into the backpack he holds out and recoils dramatically. “Gross. Did you puke in that?”

“The insult!” Jongdae feigns offense. “That’s my famous gourmet rice porridge, I’ll have you know. Even Bodeul ate it. Well, some of it.”

“Must be good then,” Baekhyun says, rather doubtfully. “But the time may have come to throw that bag away.”

“No way,” Jongdae protests. “This is my favourite backpack.”

“You’ve had it since high school! Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

“I will never abandon you, my faithful backpack,” Jongdae tells his oozing bag, holding it out at arm’s length in front of him as they fall in step towards the elevators. Slow drips of rice porridge leak from the bottom corner, leaving a trail of milky splatters on the floor in their wake. “You’ve done so much for me.”

“You know,” Chanyeol muses as they fall in step towards the elevators. “A nosebag actually isn’t such a bad idea. You could use it to eat during long surgeries, or when outpatients overrun.”

Jongdae snickers at the idea of performing surgery whilst munching out of a nosebag, but his work phone rings before he can comment. Thankfully he’d had it in his pocket, so the device has avoided the rice porridge deluge the rest of his belongings have suffered.

“I need an acute assessment.” The voice of the resident in the ED sounds stressed. “Single pregnancy, 25 weeks gestation, came in with a headache and hypertension, she’s just started seizing -”

All humour instantly leaves Jongdae. “Support ABCs and get a line in for magnesium. I’ll be there in a minute,” he says. Chanyeol and Baekhyun look at him with twin expressions of mild curiosity.

“Eclampsia.” He thrusts his dripping backpack into Baekhyun’s hands. “Deal with this for me?” He doesn’t even wait to hear a reply before turning to sprint down the corridor towards the ED.

The woman is still seizing when he gets there less than a minute later, and he immediately recognizes one of his outpatients, 27-year-old Lee Rijin. The ED staff have gotten a line in and started a loading dose of magnesium sulfate, but Jongdae knows she’s in serious danger, and so is her unborn child.

“We’ll do an emergency C-section as soon as she stops seizing. Get me an anaesthetist and an operating room, and ask NICU to go on standby,” he instructs the resident. At only 25 weeks gestation there’s less than a 50% chance the child will survive the birth, but if he doesn’t get the fetus out of its seizing mother soon, both of them will die. “History?”

The history the resident gives him as they run with the wheeled gurney towards the hastily prepared OR makes him grind his teeth. Rijin presented to her GP twice in the past week with headaches, but she'd lacked most of the common symptoms and the GP had missed diagnosing pre-eclampsia. Why had she gone to her GP instead of coming to him? He would have picked it up immediately. Now it might be too late.

Rijin stops seizing while he’s scrubbing in, but just as he enters the OR she goes into cardiac arrest. Jongdae manually displaces the uterus to the left and the resuscitation team starts CPR. He watches the digital clock on the wall as the seconds blink by. He knows the almost inevitable outcome of this situation. But still, in those four minutes he must allow the resuscitation team before he has to make the decision to abandon the mother and try to save the child, he silently prays to anyone and anything that may be listening that he’s wrong.

The instant the four minutes are up, Jongdae starts the emergency C-section. His world narrows down into an intense focus. He takes the scalpel handed him by the theatre nurse and cuts swiftly through the layers of skin, fat and muscle while the CPR team continues chest compressions in an attempt to keep enough blood flowing through the dead mother’s system to keep the child alive. Thirty-six seconds after his first incision, he lifts a baby girl from the womb. She is blood-slicked, shriveled, and tiny enough that she fits in the palm of his hand.

She is dead, and the CPR team are unable to resuscitate her.

\---

Chanyeol wakes up to the sound of coffee cups clinking and the scent of frying bacon drifting in from the kitchen. A vague unease penetrates his sleep-dazed state and he wonders if he’s forgotten something important, because with both himself and his boyfriend working demanding full-time jobs, cooked breakfasts are generally only managed on rare and special occasions. He’s pretty sure it’s Thursday and he has a shift today, and he’s pretty sure that Yeonseok has work as well. Crap, he’s not forgotten their anniversary? No, he remembers with some relief, that’s not till November. Is his boyfriend getting promoted again? No, that can’t be right either. Yeonseok would have reminded him of something like that yesterday when they went to bed, and besides, Yeonseok wouldn’t be cooking for that. He would be complaining that Chanyeol hadn’t cooked for him. Wait, is Chanyeol getting promoted? He almost laughs aloud at himself. No, Chanyeol is definitely not getting promoted. Okay, Sherlock, he thinks to himself wryly. You’ve failed the morning deduction test. Get up and find out what’s going on.

He pushes the blankets off and shivers as the cold air hits him. He throws on the first shirt he finds, realizes it’s Yeonseok’s when the cuffs end up five centimetres shy of his wrists, but he’s too sleepy to bother changing right now. He shuffles into the kitchen on bare feet, eyes half-closed, following his nose to the source of the delicious aromas. He bumps into the kitchen doorway, grabs the doorframe, and closes his eyes all the way. The scent of strong coffee is so perfect that he has to just enjoy it for a few seconds.

Yeonseok’s golden laughter reaches him, more perfect than the scent of coffee. A warm cup is pressed into one of his hands, and he’s guided by the arm towards the table. Chanyeol finally manages to drag his eyes open and raises an eyebrow at his smiling boyfriend.

“What did I do to deserve such a breakfast?” He takes a sip of his coffee and hums in pleasure. It’s hot and strong with a splash of cream, and it tastes like heaven. “Kim Yeonseok, did I ever tell you I love you?”

Yeonseok sits down across the table and warms his hands on his cup of coffee.

“I love you too,” he says instead of answering Chanyeol’s question, and Chanyeol has to fight really hard to look severely at him and not lean over the table and kiss that little smile from his way-too-perfect lips. There’s a short silence, which Chanyeol loses in gazing at his boyfriend’s downcast eyes as he stares into his coffee cup.

“I invited my grandparents over this evening,” Yeonsok finally says. “I want to tell them about us.”

Chanyeol chokes on his sip of coffee. When he’s finished spluttering, he looks up with wide eyes, chest hurting a little from the coffee that almost went into his lungs, but Yeonseok won’t meet his eyes.

“What?” he whispers.

Yeonseok just shrugs. “I want them to know who I’ve been in love with for the past almost five years,” he says. “I want to include them in every part of my life. I want them to meet my boyfriend, and that just so happens to be you, Park Chanyeol.” Now he lifts his gaze to meet Chanyeol’s. His eyes are set in determination and Chanyeol can see there is no talking him out of it this time. He swallows and tries to find something clever to say, something flippant and funny that will show that he’s as cool with all this as Yeonseok is, that he’s totally okay, but his head feels empty, and Yeonseok’s words just echo inside it.

Ever since Chanyeol figured out he was gay as a teenager he has kept it a secret - a very well-kept secret. The only person who knows is his sister, and though she has accepted it fully, he has been unable to take the much bigger and more dangerous step of telling his parents. He’s afraid of hurting them, and if he’s honest with himself, he’s also afraid they’ll reject him. They’ve never been particularly progressive. Having a gay son might well be more than they can tolerate.

He wishes he was more like Yeonseok. Yeonseok doesn’t seem to be scared of what people think of him. He has told his parents and his younger brother, and his family has been open minded about it all, but telling his grandparents is a big step to take. The fact that Yeonseok is willing to risk disappointing his grandparents for Chanyeol makes Chanyeol feel like a total jerk, because Chanyeol can’t - or won’t - do the same for him.

Yeonseok deserves better than him.

“Are you sure you really want to do this?” he tries.

Yeonseok raises an eyebrow, obviously seeing right through him. “Yes. I’ve thought this over, Chanyeol. I don’t want to hide from them anymore.”

Chanyeol feels the slight stab he always feels when Yeonseok is so open about his sexuality. He wants to be the same. He wants to let the world know who he really is, without hiding anything. He wants his family and friends to meet his amazing, perfect boyfriend, and for them to love him too - but he just can’t. The fear of losing his family is too hard to overcome.

“You’re not on call tonight, right?”

Chanyeol shakes his head no. He isn’t on call, he’ll be back around 5 pm and they will cook together and mess up the kitchen and he will wish that they didn’t have guests over so he can kiss his boyfriend senseless.

“I mean, are you really sure you want to introduce them to me?” Chanyeol asks, making an overexaggerated grimace in an attempt to seem silly. It’s his best way to ignore the feelings that have surfaced. Yeonseok chuckles a little.

“Is that the best you got?” he asks, eyes twinkling, and the conversation is over. Chanyeol knows they’ll talk later, perhaps in the evening, about feelings of disappointment, judgment and fear, but for now, he’s more than happy to push the whole issue aside.

Yeonseok leaves for work first. His blue uniform shirt hugs his sculpted biceps and fits his slim torso perfectly, and Chanyeol wishes their kiss goodbye would last several beats longer than it does.

As he arrives at work he meets Jongdae, whose smile reeks of family life and love and whose backpack reeks of food. They split when Jongdae rushes towards the ED and Chanyeol continues towards his office located on the children's ward. He tries to focus on his job, but the knowledge that he’s meeting Yeonseok’s grandparents this evening hangs over him, and he keeps catching himself zoning out in his brief quiet moments, staring blankly into space.

He has just waved goodbye to a 6-year-old with asthma when a pager beeps. It takes him a few seconds to realise it is actually him being paged; he’s not used to the device going off when he’s not on call. Dr. Park to ED is all the message on the pager says, and Chanyeol frowns. He’s about to call the ED and ask what’s wrong when he receives another message on his pager; STAT. The secretary sends him a questioning glance when he walks out of his office and Chanyeol can only shrug. He doesn’t have the answer to her question.

“Dr. Park!” he hears when he enters the chaos of the ED. A nurse sends him a rushed smile and motions for him to follow her.

“We need you to see a young patient. He refuses to talk to us, even the chief tried, and we figured it was better to try with a paediatrician instead of continuing and failing,” she tells him as she leads him effortlessly between rooms and curtains. Chanyeol has no idea where he’s going, and the further he’s led into this endless maze they call the ED, the more positive he is that he’ll never find his way back out again.

“Where's Dr. Choi? She’s on call today, isn’t she?” he asks, glancing around to try and find anything he can use to remember the way by. The nurse turns a corner and Chanyeol hurries to follow.

“She was busy, and if I’m completely honest, I think you’re the better of you two to deal with this specific patient.”

She opens the door into a room in which a small boy sits on a bed, a woman he assumes is his mother beside him. His hand is wrapped in gauze and he’s supporting it with his other hand, careful not to touch the obviously hurt area. His mother is patting his black hair soothingly. Chanyeol steps into the room and the nurse closes the door behind them. He sits down on the chair in front of the boy and smiles. The boy presses a little closer to his mother.

“Hello,” Chanyeol says. “My name is Chanyeol. What’s yours?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

“His name is Daejung,” his mother says instead. Chanyeol keeps his attention on the boy, not the mother, and sends Daejung a smile.

“Daejung? What a handsome name. How old are you?”

This time he elicits an answer from the boy. Five is the whispered age, but Chanyeol isn’t deterred by the low volume. Words, any words, are progress. They’ll be getting on well soon.

“Whoa, you’re a big boy then!”

Daejung nods. Chanyeol points to his bandaged hand and Daejung responds by pulling it closer to his chest.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Daejung nods again. “Can I see it? I promise I won’t touch it, just look.”

The boy pauses, unsure of what to do. Chanyeol can feel his mother get impatient next to him and Daejung obviously senses it as well, because he whimpers and hugs his hand even closer.

“Come on Daejung, let the nice doctor look at your hand,” she says. Chanyeol gives her a quick smile.

“It’s fine, we’ll get there.”

Chanyeol has dealt with many children and even more parents in his career, and he knows what he’s seeing here. There is a story behind Daejung’s injury he’s either ashamed of or scared of.

“If mom helps you unwrap your hand, do you think you can hold it like that but without all the bandages? I’ll stay here and won’t get any closer.”

Daejung takes a deep breath but agrees. He whimpers a little as his mother helps him unwrap his hand and when it’s finally free of the gauze, Chanyeol sees that a third-degree burn covers his entire palm. It’s a mess of red and white in the centre and blackened around the edges of his hand. Now it makes sense that the boy isn’t crying or screaming in pain. Whatever has burned him has damaged multiple nerve endings.

“Does it hurt?” Chanyeol checks. The boy hangs his head and gives it a tiny shake. Shame, Chanyeol thinks. He knows he has to be careful with how he asks his questions and not lead the boy to answer what he thinks Chanyeol wants to hear.

“Daejung, do you know what happened to your hand?”

Daejung looks at his mother and leans up to whisper in her ear. She shakes her head and looks at her son. Chanyeol just observes them. There’s something wrong here. The boy is keeping something from him and his mother on purpose. Something that makes Chanyeol’s stomach churn. A third-degree burn doesn’t turn up on a five-year-old’s palm accidentally. First-degree, sure. Second-degree, maybe. But third?

Daejung looks at his hand one more time before glancing up to meet Chanyeol’s eyes.

“You burned your hand. We need to give you a little prick with a needle in your good hand, the one that isn’t burned, and we will have to treat the burn. Do you understand?”

Daejung’s eyes widen in fear. Chanyeol remains calm as the boy starts crying, protesting against needles and treatment. Instead of trying to convince Daejung, he gets eye contact with the mother and nods towards the door. She’s about to get off the bed and leave when Chanyeol realises she misunderstands him.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he explains. “Stay here with Daejung.”

When Chanyeol gets off the chair, Daejung starts fussing more, fearful of what’s to come. Chanyeol leaves mother and son alone, but when he walks out the door, it becomes clear that he’s completely lost. He needs a nurse, preferably the one who led him here in the first place as she obviously knows the patient. Chanyeol turns back to get the room number before he decides at random to go left and follow the corridor to wherever it leads him. About 30 seconds later a nurse passes him.

“Excuse me!” he calls. She turns around and gives him a glare that nearly makes him wither. “Uhm…” Chanyeol squints to read the name on her tag. “Nurse Seo, do you know the patient in room 16B?”

“No, but Nurse Kim does,” she says curtly, turns back around, and hurries away. Chanyeol stares at her retreating back and wants to curse. He doesn’t know who Nurse Kim is, and with the common surname there’s bound to be several of them anyway. He fumbles with his pager and tries not to look like a lost child when an orderly passes him. Damn, this is stupid. Chanyeol much prefers staying at the children’s ward where he’s on good terms with the doctors, the nurses and the secretaries.

“Dr. Park,” he hears behind him. He turns around to find a nurse smiling up at him, and a smile breaks over his face as he recognizes her. “Nurse Kim” is Kim Songmi, Dr. Zhang’s wife. He knows her quite well since he’s been friendly with the oncologist for years. His smile must show his relief, because she laughs up at him before asking him how she can help.

“I feel like you’ve just rescued me from a labyrinth,” he tells her, and lowers his voice to add, “with the minotaur being Nurse Seo.”

She puts her hand over her mouth to hide a giggle. “Oh dear,” she says. “Did she bite?”

“I daresay I’ll survive,” he sighs dramatically. “Can you get me an EMLA patch and an IV line on the kid in room 16B?”

“Sure,” Songmi says. “Follow me.” She starts walking him back towards the exam room. Chanyeol follows her, long legs taking one stride to every two of hers. “He’s got a large third-degree burn on his palm,” he explains, “so we need saline intravenously. I think the best way to go about treatment is operating to remove dead tissue before we look at the damage underneath. We’ll never get him to agree to doing it without anaesthetics.”

She nods and leaves for the medicine room to fetch the EMLA patches. Rather than going with her, Chanyeol peeks back inside the exam room and watches Daejung. He’s now sitting on his mother’s lap and cuddling into her while she kisses the top of his head and sings to him in a soothing voice. He knocks on the door before he enters and the mother stops her singing.

“Do you believe in magic, Daejung?” Chanyeol asks as he sits down in front of them again. The boy shakes his head. Chanyeol gasps dramatically and Daejung stares at him, his attention immediately caught. “You don’t? What if I told you that I can perform magic?”

Daejung seems rather unconvinced.

“My mom says magic isn't real,” he says and leans against her chest. Chanyeol just widens his eyes.

“Well, that's really strange, because I can do it. Do you want to see?”

Daejung nods at the same moment Songmi returns with an IV line and the EMLA patches. Chanyeol grabs one and helps Daejung place it on his good hand. Daejung is still a little unconvinced Chanyeol can do magic, but he’s also getting curious.

Chanyeol learnt from a young age to tell magical stories. As a child, his father had read him bedtime stories and had created original stories just for him. At some point their roles had reversed, and it had been Chanyeol telling fantastical stories of dragons, monsters and princes. He’d never really outgrown his fantasy; it was always easy to come up with something new, something so utterly ridiculous it actually made sense to the children listening and it had helped Chanyeol many times in his work.

So he sits in front of Daejung and invents a story about a brave prince who is on a quest to rescue a fairy who’s been kidnapped by dragons to make their hoards of gold extra sparkly. He’s learned a few sleight-of-hand tricks to go with his stories, and he always carries a few useful items around in his pockets for this kind of occasion. Daejung watches in amazement as he makes a small fluffy ball - this stands in for the “fairy” - disappear from one hand and reappear in all kinds of unexpected places, including from behind Daejung’s ear and out of Chanyeol’s mouth. The latter, accompanied as it is by Chanyeol’s best look of wide-eyed astonishment as the “fairy” pops out of his mouth, actually elicits a tiny giggle.

When Songmi steps back, Chanyeol sees that the IV line is in place on the small hand and he finishes off the story with the brave young prince defeating the dragons, and the fairy rewarding him by putting magic dust on the burns the dragons gave him and making him better.

“You see? I told you magic was possible,” he says. Daejung looks at his hand. A small glove is keeping the IV line safe.

“Do you think you could tell the good fairy about how your hand got burned?” he asks. He makes the sparkly ball dance across his fingers. Most of the fear is gone from Daejung now and he gives a tiny nod, his eyes still fixed on the “fairy”. Before he’s had a chance to say anything, the door opens and a man enters the room.

Daejung immediately recoils. He cuddles closer to his mother, grabs onto her shirt and starts whimpering. The man hurries towards the child and woman, worry painted across his features. When the man reaches out towards his son, Daejung starts crying. In the grand scheme of things, his crying could be anything related to being in a hospital and being hurt, but given the context of what he’s just seen, Chanyeol is pretty sure he knows what’s going on. He looks over his shoulder to get eye contact with Songmi. He can read her solemn agreement in her face. This man, Daejung’s father, is the cause of his injury and Daejung is visibly scared of him.

They meet outside the room and stare at each other for a second.

“We have to report it, don’t we?” Songmi says in a low voice.

“I’d say so. You agree there’s reasonable suspicion to involve the police, then?”

Songmi’s eyes widen. “Are you kidding? That is definitely not an accidental injury and the kid seems terrified of his father.”

Chanyeol nods. They have to do something about this and involving the police is the best way to deal with it. Neither he nor she can do anything on their own, and letting the family know their suspicions might endanger the boy. They need the police here to investigate and de-escalate if anything happens.

“Stay with them, watch them and make sure that Daejung is safe. I’ll report the incident.”

When she’s gone back into the room, Chanyeol stands in the hallway for a few moments, counting his breaths. Then he turns on his heels and walks down the corridors until he finds an empty room from which he can make the phone call.

Chanyeol has never reported child abuse directly to the police before. It’s relatively rare for him to meet patients like Daejung where suspicions are strong enough to go directly to the police, rather than going through the hospital social service worker first. The police officer on the other end takes his report and tells him they’ll send an officer to assess the situation. Chanyeol finds his way back to room 16B. The family are waiting to be told about the next step in the treatment plan and Chanyeol does his best to explain without showing his emotions. His focus is on Daejung; Chanyeol is a doctor for the kids, not their parents. Daejung isn’t thrilled about needing surgery but accepts it when Chanyeol promises he will sleep through it all and dream awesome dreams of fighting dragons.

“Dr. Park, you’re wanted at reception,” a voice from the doorway says. Chanyeol excuses himself for a minute and leaves with the nurse, a different one this time - Songmi must have been called elsewhere. The familiar face that greets him when he comes to the reception area surprises him more than he’d like to admit. The perfectly fitted uniform on the perfectly masculine body. The perfect smile with full lips and perfect eyes that stare directly at him. Something tugs at Chanyeol’s heart; something that has nothing to do with what is about to happen and everything to do with the fact that he’s standing in front of his boyfriend and he has to maintain his professionalism. A little voice in the back of his mind brings the conversation from this morning back. He hears echoes of his own encouraging words to little Daejung; be brave and fight evil, Chanyeol; fight homophobic dragons and burning shame.

And Chanyeol can’t do it. Not here, not in these circumstances, and maybe not at all, because he isn’t a brave prince, and the magical fairy is only a silly sparkly ball from the discount store.

“Dr. Park,” Yeonseok says and reaches out a hand to shake. As they’ve agreed to do when in public around Chanyeol’s friends, colleagues, or family, they pretend they’re strangers, but Chanyeol’s heart screams at him. He doesn’t want to pretend he doesn’t know Yeonseok. He doesn’t want to hide, but the world is so dangerous.

“I believe you have suspicions of child abuse,” Yeonseok says calmly. His words bring Chanyeol back from his inner turmoil. He nods and looks around for an area in which they can talk more privately. He finds a small room and when the door closes, Yeonseok relaxes visibly.

“Hey,” he says, voice soothing and full of love. “What’s this child abuse thing?”

Chanyeol clenches his fists to avoid grabbing Yeonseok’s hand and linking their fingers.

“I have a five-year-old boy who has a third-degree burn on his palm and he’s visibly scared of his father,” he says quietly. “He hasn’t said anything about the cause yet, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it out of him now his father’s turned up. A child putting his hand on a hot stove top or something similar doesn’t result in third-degree burns, because the child will snatch their hand away before the burn gets that bad. It can’t be accidental, and combined with the fear he showed when his father entered, it just seemed too suspicious to ignore,” he says. His neck is hurting, and it’s only when he rolls his head to try and ease it that he realises just how tense his shoulders are. Yeonseok nods and takes a notebook from his pocket.

“I'll need to speak to the parents and the kid. Where are they now?”

There’s still a hint of love in his voice, but he’s focused back onto the task at hand. The police officer Chanyeol fell in love with sits directly in front of him, taking notes on what Chanyeol has told him.

“He needs surgery, so either the nurses are prepping him or they’re still in room 16B,” Chanyeol says. There’s a short silence while Yeonseok writes and Chanyeol stares blankly at the table. He only realises Yeonseok has gotten up to leave when he hears the door to the hallway open. Sudden desperation surges through him and he gets up as well.

“Yeonseok, wait.”

Yeonseok turns back in the doorway, and the open love that shines in his eyes hurts Chanyeol's heart. He wants to see it all the time, but as the seconds tick away and Chanyeol says nothing more, the look fades, replaced by blank professionalism. Chaneyol swallows a lump in his throat and says, “I'll show you the way, Officer Kim."

When they get to room 16B, not a trace of personal connection remains between the doctor and the police officer, and he can only wave a sad goodbye to Daejung before the exam room door closes behind Yeonseok, shutting Chanyeol out.

Chanyeol stands in the empty corridor and wishes he was braver. He wishes he’d said “see you at home” or “be careful” or “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”, but the closed door won’t answer him. Looking at the door, Chanyeol decides that next time, he will be braver. He will start by being unapologetically in love with Yeonseok when his grandparents come over for dinner. And maybe one day, he’ll learn how to be brave enough to tackle the huge and terrifying dragon that is not actually his parents, but is his own fear of rejection.

\---

“This is so unfair,” Baekhyun mutters to himself as he walks down the fifth floor corridor towards his department’s open-plan office-slash-meeting room. “What did I do to deserve this?”

He’s holding Jongdae’s disgusting, porridge-leaking backpack at arm’s length. With its burden of files, folders, and whatever else Jongdae keeps in there, it’s heavy enough that it’s making his shoulder ache to hold it like this, but there’s no way Baekhyun is bringing it any closer to his body. He doesn’t want to get that gunk all over his pants and shoes. He may be a surgeon and used to having blood splattered over him on a regular basis, but that’s when he’s fully protected in scrubs, gown and gloves, plastic booties covering his shoes, and binocular loupes over his eyes. The only parts of him left exposed during surgery are the tiny areas of his face between the lines of his mask and cap, and a small section of his neck between his chin and the high collar of his gown. He doesn’t appreciate getting gross stuff on his clothes or skin, and that goes for the unfortunate remains of Jongdae’s breakfast as well as a blood spray from a tabled patient.

Jongdae wouldn’t have left him with the mess if he hadn’t had to, though. The obstetrician is one of the most thoughtful people Baekhyun knows. He briefly flashes back to Jongdae’s face as he’d listened to his call from the ED. All the sunny cheerfulness that is such an integral part of him had vanished like a light going out, and the way he’d barked his orders down the phone and then gone racing off as if he was trying to set the world record for the hospital-corridor 100 metre sprint tells Baekhyun that Dr. Kim has a tough job ahead of him. It’s not his area of expertise, but he knows eclampsia is life-threatening, and he hopes his friend won’t have a table death on his hands today. They happen, of course, they happen to all surgeons every now and then, but repetition doesn’t make them any easier to deal with.

He’s nearly at the end of the long corridor, and his right shoulder, supporting the weight of the backpack, is aching sharply. Baekhyun eyes a nearby trash can and plays with the idea of just throwing the thing out. Jongdae’s ancient backpack was on its last legs even before his friend decided to redecorate its interior with porridge. It makes him look younger than the interns, rather than the distinguished attending physician and father of three that he is, and Baekhyun has no idea why Jongdae is so attached to it. He would be doing him a favour if he got rid of it for him. He could even get him a replacement – it’s his birthday in a couple of weeks, an early birthday present wouldn’t be amiss. One of those sophisticated square leather backpacks, perhaps. Getting him to carry an actual briefcase might be a little too optimistic.

He enters the meeting room with a grimace of pain on his face. There’s a bench and sink on the far wall and he dumps the backpack in the sink with a sigh of relief, then massages his aching shoulder. He turns around and glances at the two young women sitting around the long table in the centre of the room. The intern, now in the second week of her plastics rotation, has her head pillowed on her arms and her eyes shut, and the third-year resident is scrolling through a case study on her tablet. Neither of them appeared to notice him come in. Baekhyun shrugs and turns back to the sink. The meeting won’t start until the chief and the other three residents arrive, so he fishes out Jongdae’s plastic file-folders with a grimace and rinses the porridge off, then sets them aside when he hears the door open again. He turns to see the missing four members of the plastic surgery team appear. The chief, Seo Kyunghee, is followed in by the first, second, and fourth-year residents, reminding Baekhyun of ducklings faithfully trailing after their mother duck.

“Okay, let’s start,” Kyunghee announces in her usual brisk tone. Baekhyun scurries over to sit at the table and pokes the sleeping intern’s shoulder. She sits up with a jerk and stares blearily around. Baekhyun can commiserate. It took him a while to fully adapt to the near sleepless state of being an intern too. Now he’s a fellow and well-used to night shifts, but he still remembers how hard it was at first.

They go over the patient notes from the rounds the night-shift resident and the intern made last night, and Kyunghee gives the unfortunate pair her usual razing about why they haven’t checked this or that detail. Then they go on to the day’s surgical schedule. Baekhyun is leading two surgeries today. The first is a cleft lip and palate on a 13-month-old boy. The case is fairly severe and he’s been given the OR for six hours. After that he’s got an adult otoplasty which he hopes he’ll be able to finish well under the two hours he’s been allocated. The second-year resident, Park Jin, is assisting him for both surgeries.

He and Jin are scrubbing in for the first surgery, standing side-by-side over the long, trough-like sink and rubbing the yellow antibacterial soap right up to their elbows. The soap stings viciously in the small patches of eczema that linger at the insides of Baekhyun’s wrists, the crook of his elbows, and between his fingers, but he ignores the pain. He’s used to it, and anyway, his eczema is nearly as clear as it’s ever been. Stress makes it worse, but Baekhyun’s been particularly happy in the past couple of months, and his skin seems to be reflecting that. He can’t help smiling as the most common subject of his thoughts comes into his mind.

“You look happy,” Jin observes. “What are you thinking about?”

“My girlfriend,” Baekhyun admits with a sheepish grin.

Jin laughs. “I should have known. You’ve got a one-track mind,” he teases. “Not that I blame you. Nari’s great.”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun agrees. He hesitates, wondering if he should share the exact reason for today’s smile, but the gold wedding band he catches sight of on Jin’s finger decides for him.

“I’m going to propose soon,” he says. “I’m certain she’s the one.”

“Wow!” Jin smiles at him. “Congratulations. Have you decided how you’ll do it?”

“Not yet. I want it to be perfect. How did you propose to your wife?”

Baekhyun knows Jin has been happily married for nearly a decade. Despite being only a second-year resident, he’s five years older than Baekhyun and is retraining after wanting a more fulfilling career than pushing paperwork around for the rest of his life. Despite his initial discomfort at being ranked higher than a man older than him, Baekhyun has found that he enjoys the calm maturity the older man brings to a role usually filled by kids still struggling to behave like responsible adults, let alone handle being surgery residents.

“It was terrible,” Jin laughs. “So I take her to dinner at the restaurant at the top of Namsan Tower, but I’m so nervous I leave the ring in the car. Of course it takes at least an hour to get from the carpark to the top of the tower, with the queues for the monorail and all, so I can’t just go and get it. I figure I’ll propose back at the car, so when we get off the monorail I just sprint off like a crazy person so I can get the ring ready before she catches up. When she finally gets back, I’m leaning against the hood in this totally awkward pose. She looks at me and goes, “Jin, what the actual fuck?” and I instantly forget every word of my speech. I kind of brandish the jewelry box at her and blurt out, “I’ve forgotten everything I was going to say except marry me.”” He shakes his head, grinning at the memory. “She was laughing so much it took about five minutes before she could say yes.”

Baekhyun giggles at the story. “Well, at least it worked."

“Have you talked about it with Nari?” Jin asks. “Some girls prefer something private.”

Baekhyun shakes his head. “I want it to be a total surprise. She loves surprises. She’ll be thrilled!” He smiles dreamily.

“You mean you haven’t discussed marriage?” Jin frowns a little. “Not at all?”

“Well, not specifically,” Baekhyun says. “But we don’t need to. We’ve been together for nearly six years, you know. I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without her, and I know she feels the same.”

“Well, you know her best,” Jin says, but caught up in his dreams, Baekhyun misses the slight hint of doubt in his voice.

They finish scrubbing up and the OR nurses help them gown and glove. It’s a struggle for Baekhyun to put aside his thoughts of how he’ll propose and focus on the surgery. He could line the street outside her apartment with roses, perhaps? Her favourite flowers are lilies, but they stand for sadness and he doesn’t want to create a bad omen, even if they are her favourite. Thinking of how her eyes close and her face goes blissful when she smells the scent of lilies makes Baekhyun decide that he’ll stop and pick up some from the florist on the way home tonight. It’s no specific occasion, but when it comes to Nari, he doesn’t need one. She deserves her favourite flowers any day of the week.

“Dr. Byun?” The head OR nurse asks as they stand over the table, the small, still form of the anaesthetized child mostly covered with surgical blankets, only the face with the cleft lip exposed for him to do his work. “What music do you want today?”

Baekhyun smiles at her beneath his surgical mask. “You decide,” he says. He’s thinking of Nari’s laughter as they’d watched a rom-com last night, and no music played in an operating room can ever come close to the music of her laugh.

When Baekhyun finishes his surgery, it’s close to lunch time. He leaves the OR together with Jin, but as they get near the cafeteria he remembers Jongdae’s backpack in the sink. He could just let it sit there, but he usually eats lunch with Chanyeol and Jongdae, and Baekhyun isn’t sure he can tell Jongdae in good conscience that he was too lazy to go back and fetch it. It is apparently not just a bag to Jongdae, and Baekhyun is a good friend. He excuses himself to Jin and heads back towards their meeting room on the fifth floor. He opens the door and expects to find it exactly as he left it, but the sink is empty, and Jongdae’s files have been placed in a neat stack on the edge of the table. Baekhyun pauses and blinks a few times. He knows he left the bag in the sink.

It doesn’t take him long to cross the room but the sink is still empty and there’s no sign of the backpack. Spinning on his heels, he strides towards the files and opens them. The documents inside look okay to him, though Jongdae will have to check them over when he gets them back, but right now Baekhyun needs to find the missing bag. He's actually getting a little panicked by the knowledge that he had his friend’s favourite bag this morning and now he doesn’t.

He leaves the meeting room and stares down the corridor. Has someone stolen the bag? It hardly seems likely. If anyone has stolen Jongdae’s bag, they're an idiot. A thief would surely have gone for the files rather than the empty food-soaked bag. But a bag can’t just disappear into thin air, so someone has to have done something with it. A nurse sends him a smile when she passes him and Baekhyun finds himself wanting to reach out, wanting to beg her if she knows what has happened to the bag full of porridge in the sink, but it sounds like such a stupid question, and the nurses don’t really have any reason to be in the meeting room anyway. Who has reason to be in the meeting room outside of his colleagues? The answer seems clear as day when he finally finds it; the cleaning staff.

He jogs down the corridor until he reaches the cleaning closet door at the end. A relieved smile crosses his face. The bag will be here, he will be able to hand it back over to Jongdae, and everything will be fine. But when he opens the door and searches the small room with his eyes, the bag isn’t there. He steps inside and crouches down to look between the buckets and big, industrial-sized containers of cleaning chemicals on the metal shelves.

“Where the fuck is it?” he asks aloud, and is startled when he gets an answer from behind. He leaps up and spins around to find himself face to face with one of the cleaning staff with a confused expression on her face.

“I didn’t mean to surprise you, Dr. Byun,” she says. “What are you looking for?”

Baekhyun feels hot embarrassment crawl up his neck and takes a deep breath to force it down. He feels like a kid who’s just been caught somewhere he’s not allowed to go. It’s stupid, because although it’s not exactly normal to find surgeons sneaking around in cleaning closets, there’s certainly nothing forbidding him to be there. He blows his fringe off his forehead and gives the cleaning lady a sheepish smile. This is all Jongdae’s fault.

“I left a bag in the sink in the meeting room. Did you happen to find it?” Even saying it out loud is embarrassing.

The cleaning lady widens her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, I threw it away. It was in a terrible state and there was really no saving it. I put the files on the table in there, didn’t you find them?”

“I did,” Baekhyun assures her hastily. She’s looking worriedly at him and he doesn’t want her to feel bad. Anyone would’ve wanted to throw that thing out - except for Jongdae. “Don’t worry about the bag. You’re right, it was a disaster.”

He leaves the cleaning closet and hurries back to the meeting room to get Jongdae’s files. The room isn’t empty anymore, a couple of the residents are eating their lunch over books and cases, but Baekhyun doesn’t want to stay here, and he’s not going to the cafeteria, that’s for sure. There’s no way he can face Jongdae for lunch now. He needs to be alone so he can calm himself down and gather the courage to tell Jongdae he’s lost the backpack his friend entrusted to him. So instead of the cafeteria, he heads for the rooftop.

He’s hit with a gust of September wind when he opens the door to the roof. After the stuffy temperature-controlled environment of the hospital, it feels fresh and clean on his skin. Baekhyun closes his eyes to enjoy it. The wind tugs at the locks of his hair and blows away some of his panic, and his anxiety about losing the backpack gains a little perspective.

He steps onto the concrete roof and locks eyes with another person eating a sandwich on one of the benches near the small potted trees.

“Yo, Dr. Do,” he says, grinning. Kyungsoo just grunts at him and turns his back. Baekhyun would be offended if it was anyone else, but he knows Kyungsoo, and he knows it’s nothing personal. The radiologist isn’t a social creature and he needs time to recharge when forced to interact with human beings all day long.

Baekhyun sits next to the other doctor on the bench and silence settles between them, broken only by the quiet chomping noises of Kyungsoo eating his sandwich. After a couple of minutes, Baekhyun begins to get antsy. He has never been very good with silence. He tries to think of something to say that won’t annoy Kyungsoo, but he doesn’t find anything before the door opens again and the tall, lanky figure of Chanyeol steps onto the rooftop. His shoulders are slumped and his eyes downcast, and he doesn’t notice Baekhyun and Kyungsoo on the benches. He walks over to the railing, leans his forearms on it, and gazes unseeingly out over the city skyline. Baekhyun follows him with his eyes and tilts his head. Chanyeol isn’t his usual goofy self. Something’s wrong.

“Is he okay?” he asks Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo’s dark eyes move to linger on the paediatrician’s back, but he just shrugs and takes another bite of his sandwich. That’s okay - Baekhyun doesn’t need Kyungsoo’s reply to know the answer. Chanyeol seems so spaced out as he stands there, staring into the distance. Baekhyun can tell just by looking that he’s not okay.

“Should I go talk to him?” Baekhyun wonders. He’s not even expecting an answer this time, talking more to himself than the antisocial radiologist. Whatever has caused Chanyeol to look like this, preferring solitude to company in his lunch break, has to be big. It’s so unlike him. Baekhyun rises from his seat and stretches his arms in front of him. He has only taken one step forward when the door to the rooftop opens again and Jongdae steps out. Panic runs cold through Baekhyun’s blood for a second. What the hell is Jongdae doing here? How could he possibly know Baekhyun managed to get his backpack thrown away? He looks frustrated and upset, but he doesn’t focus on Baekhyun and Kyungsoo at all, stomping away to a bench on the opposite side of Baekhyun’s.

The sound of crinkling plastic from behind has Baekhyun turning his attention back to Kyungsoo.

“What the fudge is going on today?” Kyungsoo is scowling as he packs his half-eaten sandwich back into its container. “Why are you all here? Is there no place a good man can eat in peace in this god-forsaken hospital?”

He stands up from the bench like a small but very irritated thundercloud. His aura of annoyance is so strong that all three of the other doctors turn to watch as the radiologist storms towards the rooftop door. As he passes, Baekhyun hears Kyungsoo growl something along the lines of _don’t mind me, I’ll just chain myself to my computer and never leave again_. When the door slams closed, Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Jongdae are left staring at each other.

It’s Baekhyun that breaks the silence. “Are you guys okay?”

It’s easier, Baekhyun finds, to focus on his friends rather than his own reason for being here. There is obviously something wrong with Chanyeol, and Jongdae looking this rattled is not normal either.

“No,” Jongdae says at the same time Chanyeol mutters “yeah”. Chanyeol’s lying, but Baekhyun decides to focus on Jongdae. Chanyeol will talk when he’s ready and calling him out isn’t going to help.

“What’s up?” Baekhyun sits down on the bench he was about to vacate and pats it, inviting the other two over.

“Table death,” Jongdae says in a heavy sigh as he sits down beside Baekhyun. Chanyeol lingers in front of them, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his white coat. Baekhyun makes a gentle noise of sympathy and wraps his arms around Jongdae in a hug.

“I could’ve prevented it if the patient came to me instead of her stupid GP who didn’t notice the signs,” Jongdae tells him sadly. “I could’ve saved her and maybe the baby too if only she had trusted me earlier, but by the time I got to her it was too late for both of them.”

“It’s not your fault,” Chanyeol says, and the two on the bench look up at him. Chanyeol sends Jongdae a small smile. “I’m sure you did everything you could.”

Jongdae sighs and nods, his head now leaning against Baekhyun’s shoulder. "Losing mothers is the worst. I can't stop thinking about her older kids who don't have a parent anymore."

There’s silence around them for about 30 seconds and Chanyeol sits down beside them and stares into the distance.

“Some kids have awful parents, though,” he says. His words are so quiet they’re nearly snatched away on the wind - but not quite quiet enough. Both Baekhyun and Jongdae turn towards him with wide eyes.

“Chanyeol?” Baekhyun asks. He’s more worried now than he’d like to admit. “What is it?”

Chanyeol shakes his head, but this time Baekhyun doesn’t back down. He’s not going to let his friend get off work and go home and be alone all evening without having talked to anyone about what’s bothering him. Baekhyun is a better friend than that. He might be loud and silly and he might like a fun atmosphere better than a serious one, but he is not going to let Chanyeol struggle in his obvious distress alone.

“Hey,” Jongdae says and touches Chanyeol’s shoulder softly. “Tell us what happened, hm?”

Chanyeol stalls for a few seconds and just looks at them. Baekhyun isn’t a mind reader, and though he tries to be patient, the longer it takes, the more frustrated he becomes. He’s about to interrupt and order Chanyeol to spit it out, when the taller man finally opens up. He tells them about a consult he’d done in the ED on a young kid with an abusive father and how he had had to call the police. They sit in silence once again when Chanyeol finishes his story. None of them really knows what to say. “Sorry you had to experience that” doesn’t seem nearly enough.

“You guys want to have a drink after work?” Baekhyun asks when the silence has stretched on for too long. “You’ve both had a rough day.”

Jongdae turns towards Baekhyun with a slight smile.

“I could probably get permission from the wife,” he says, and Baekhyun chuckles.

“I can’t,” Chanyeol says and gains their attention again.

“Why not?” Baekhyun asks.

“We have guests coming over,” he says, before his eyes widen with an expression that Baekhyun is both surprised and alarmed to recognize as fear.

“We?” Jongdae asks curiously. “Who’s we?”

“Uh, I mean...” Chanyeol backtracks immediately. His head is definitely in the clouds today, and not in a good way. “Um, I just...I just can’t.”

He stands up abruptly and before either of them can ask more he’s disappeared back inside the hospital. Baekhyun and Jongdae turn to look at each other with questions in their eyes, but a pager beeps, making both men check their pockets.

“Oh crap,” Baekhyun says. It’s his pager and the message is from Jin. Lunch break is over, he hasn’t eaten, he has the otoplasty in 30 minutes and he still needs to scrub in. Not good. At least he already met the patient yesterday when he got admitted. He gets up from the bench and Jongdae follows him to the door, ready to get back to work as well.

“By the way,” Baekhyun stops Jongdae on the first step down the stairs. Jongdae lifts an eyebrow in question. “You might have to buy a new backpack. The plastic surgery cleaning staff threw it away.” The confession out, he runs down the stairs and escapes towards his OR, leaving Jongdae and his wrathful curses echoing behind him.


	3. September 24th

The outrageously loud ringing of his cellphone does its job, dragging Joonmyun from the deep, dark pit of exhausted slumber. He stares blearily at the time before he picks up the call. Just after two in the morning. Not so bad. He’s managed to get nearly a whole hour of sleep.

“Car crash victim,” he’s told. “Arriving in three minutes.”

Three minutes is not long enough for him to get from his bunk bed in the on-call room on the top floor all the way down to the emergency department on the ground floor, but that’s okay – the triage and trauma staff will handle the first few minutes anyway. Joonmyun stops quickly into a bathroom on his way down, then splashes water on his face to wake himself up.

He enters the trauma bay just as a blood-covered young man is being lifted from the ambulance stretcher onto the trauma bay gurney. He’s strapped to a spineboard, stabilizing head blocks are taped to each side of his head, and a paramedic is announcing his report to everyone in earshot. “Kang Muyeol, male, age 21, driver of a car traveling at high rate of speed, the car collided head-on with another vehicle which had crossed the centre line. Blood pressure 100 over 60, pulse 125. Open laceration in the right frontal parietal area was packed to stop bleeding….”

Road accidents with two vehicles will have more than one victim, and worried that more trouble may arrive soon, Joonmyun asks the second paramedic if there are any other patients on their way.

“The two people in the other car were taken to another hospital.” She lowers her voice and whispers, “The passenger of this vehicle was dead at the scene. We sent her in a coroner’s ambulance.”

“You mean you pronounced her?” Joonmyun raises an eyebrow. Officially, only a qualified physician can pronounce death.

The paramedic grins. “It doesn’t take an M.D. to know when a headless woman is dead,” she says, and Joonmyun gives her a wry smile. Fair enough.

The on-call neurosurgeon has been called as well. Tonight this is the first-year resident Huang Zitao. Joonmyun has met the tall, permanently exhausted-looking 25-year-old multiple times this year, and every time it’s been in the trauma bay. Their on-call schedules seem to regularly coincide. Whoever does the rostering is probably balancing the first-year resident with Joonmyun, who as a cardiothoracic fellow, has nearly a decade’s worth of experience over the junior doctor.

Nurses are cutting the victim’s clothes off, and Dr. Huang is inspecting the long, gaping gash on his head. Joonmyun glances at it as he moves to start examining the chest. Glistening white bone is clearly visible, and a line of pink brain tissue the consistency of toothpaste runs parallel to the laceration. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that that’s not a good sign. It’s clearly an open skull fracture, and the bruised and swelling brain is getting squeezed out through the fracture line like rice getting forced out of the valve of an over-full pressure cooker.

Zitao beckons a hovering intern over and instructs her to stitch up the gash. “I’m going to open it again in the OR,” he explains, “so it doesn’t have to be a work of art. Just stop the bleeding.”

The intern grimaces, and Joonmyun understands why. There’s a growing mound of macerated brain tissue oozing from the wound, but Zitao simply grabs a gauze pad and wipes it away. “Don’t worry about the gunk,” he tells her. “Just close the skin up.” He moves around the head of the bed to give her space to work and leans down to speak directly into the patient’s ear.

“Kang Muyeol, can you hear me?” he asks, and when Muyeol slowly opens his eyes and replies in the affirmative, Zitao introduces himself and begins explaining the examinations and investigations they’re going to do now.

Joonmyun leaves him to it and begins to examine the chest and abdomen. It’s actually not unusual that the patient is conscious despite the fact that his brain is leaking out of his skull, but he knows it won’t last. As the brain continues to swell and more pressure gets put on vital areas, Muyeol will quickly fade out. There a name for this phenomenon. They call them “talk-and-die” patients.

“Type and cross for six units of blood,” he instructs a trauma nurse, “and get them to send down some O negative in case he crashes. Pressure?”

“90 over 60.”

“Get another liter of fluids into him and get an X-ray tech in here.”

Zitao is now on the phone to the CT radiologist, asking for a brain scan. The X-ray technician arrives with his portable X-ray machine, and Joonmyun steps back to let him set up. He watches one of the monitors as Muyeol’s blood pressure begins to rise and stabilize, thanks to the fluids Joonmyun has ordered to replace his blood loss.

Zitao comes over and they step back far enough that the patient won’t overhear them. The junior doctor looks stressed out. “He needs a craniotomy,” he tells Joonmyun, “and the NS chief has all four of our ORs booked from 7.30 this morning. If one of his VIP patients gets bumped by this case he’ll give _me_ a craniotomy.”

Joonmyun glances at the clock on the wall. It’s nearly 3 am already, and he sees Zitao’s dilemma. There’s no way they’re getting this patient scanned and through a craniotomy fast enough to avoid delaying Zitao’s boss in one of his rooms.

“Ask them to give you a general surgery room,” he suggests.

Zitao gives a hollow laugh. “I’ll ask for a Porsche while I’m at it. I’ll have more chance of getting that.”

The chest X-ray goes up, and they both go over to inspect it.

“The mediastinum is wide,” Joonmyun murmurs. This tells him that the aorta, the biggest artery in the heart, has torn and is leaking blood into the space around the heart. A leaking aorta, like a leaking dam, can burst at any time. Joonmyun needs to replace the artery with a Teflon tube before this happens, because a burst aorta is a death sentence. He turns to Zitao. “I’ll need to get an aortogram.”

With the chest injury on top of the brain injury, Muyeol is now officially a multiple trauma case. His brain and his heart both need urgent surgical repair. It’s physically possible to operate on the brain and heart at the same time, but Joonmyun will have to thin Muyeol’s blood with an anticoagulant while he’s clamping the aorta, or the non-flowing blood will clot up the artery. But he can’t anticoagulate if Zitao’s going to do brain surgery. The brain is one of the bloodiest organs in the body, and any attempt to fix it without the body’s clotting mechanisms working would be disastrous. No, the surgeries have to be done separately, and Joonmyun’s going to have to fight with the young neurosurgeon about who gets to operate first. It’s not the first time they’ve had this battle, and it won’t be the last, and in the end it’s a battle neither of them will really win. Which is better, a brand-new aorta in a brain-dead patient, or a working brain in a body dead from aortic dissection? 

Zitao continues to assess the patient. “Muyeol, are you still with me?”

“Yeah,” the patient replies, but Joonmyun can tell he’s sleepier, more distant, and he sees Zitao’s frown. The neurosurgeon tests Muyeol’s hand grasp, and his frown gets deeper.

“Head’s going bad faster than I’d like. Let’s get him to CT.”

“I need my angiogram before we do anything else,” Joonmyun tells him. “If the aorta blows, brain surgery will be pointless. I need to fix his aorta before you do your craniotomy.”

Zitao scowls. “I’m calling my attending,” he threatens, rather in the same way a kid might say “I’m telling my mom”. Joonmyun hides a smile. He remembers the days when he was a resident and used to call the attending cardiothoracic surgeon at times like these, hoping his chief of department might bully more senior surgeons from other specialties into doing what he wanted. Most of the time, the attending would just growl at him for waking him up and tell him to deal with it himself, and by the pout that comes onto Zitao’s face as he listens on his cellphone, he’s pretty sure the resident is getting something along the same lines.

The rest of Muyeol’s X-rays show no spinal fractures or dislocations, so Zitao peels off the tape strapping the big blocks to each side of the patient’s head and Joonmyun helps the trauma team slide him off the spineboard, which is returned to the hovering paramedics who have finished their paperwork and are impatient to get back on the road. Zitao’s on his phone, trying to follow Joonmyun’s advice and get the people in charge to give him a general surgery OR so that he won’t have to mess up his chief’s neurosurgery schedule.

“There’s a liver transplant going on?” Zitao gestures wildly at the ceiling in frustration. “I don’t care if there’s a liver transplant going on! I need an OR right now!” There’s a pause, then he sighs. “Okay, okay, fine. Set up one of our NS rooms. We’ll just have to deal with the scheduling later.”

“What about my aortogram?” Joonmyun protests when the resident hangs up.

“No way,” Zitao shakes his head. “No time. He’s fading fast. Brains first, big bloody hosepipes second.”

“We have to make time! There’s no point in a craniotomy if he dissects.”

The ED chief appears between them, raising his hands as they start to face off. “Calm down, gentlemen,” Kim Minseok tells them with all the long-suffering patience of a parent. “Here’s what we’re doing. Dr. Kim, we’ll take him straight from CT to the angio suite for your aortogram, and then to the OR so you can do your craniotomy, Dr. Huang. As soon as it’s done, Dr. Kim, you can crack his chest and do whatever you want.”

“Fine,” Joonmyun sighs. It’s a compromise that favours the neurosurgeon, but something has to give. There’s really no way they can manage both injuries at once.

“God,” Zitao runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up on end. “The chief is going to kill me. That OR has back-to-back electives scheduled today.”

Joonmyun knows what he means. Repairing an aortic dissection is going to take him at least eight hours, which means the neurosurgery OR schedule is going to hell, and the lineup of elective VIP neurosurgery patients will have their surgeries cancelled. Zitao’s boss is not going to be happy. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

He suddenly feels very tired. He’s had less than two hours’ sleep in the past two days, it’s the eighth hour of his 12-hour call shift, and now he’s going to be in theatre for most of the next day.

The trauma room’s intercom buzzes. “The patient’s parents are in the waiting room,” the receptionist informs them.

Zitao and Joonmyun share a look of mutual dread, their brain-versus-heart battle forgotten in the knowledge that their problems are nothing compared to what these parents are going through. They fall in step as they head out to talk with them. Joonmyun finds this the hardest part of his job. The most complex surgical procedure can’t compare to the difficulty of telling parents that their child is in critical condition. With just a few words, he can inflict more pain than he ever can with a scalpel.

The middle-aged couple are sitting on one of the benches in the corridor outside the emergency department and holding hands. The mother is visibly holding back tears throughout their presentation, but both of them remain admirably calm as Joonmyun tells them about the probable damage to the main artery in Muyeol’s body and that it will need surgical repair. He listens as Zitao explains the head injury and gets consent for brain surgery. The parents ask the usual questions about how bad Muyeol’s brain damage will be, whether his face has been badly injured, and if they can see him before they go for surgery. Zitao dodges the brain damage issue and tells them there’s no obvious cosmetic damage to his face, and Joonmyun adds that he’s not in severe pain. Doctors have to be like politicians sometimes, stressing the good things and avoiding the bad. Unfortunately, there’s no time for the parents to see Muyeol before he goes to CT.

They return to the trauma room, where Muyeol is being prepared for transport to the radiology department. Radiology is the floor above the emergency department, and the elevator ride and short roll down the corridor takes less than a minute, but it’s always unnerving transporting a critical patient who should be hooked up to a sea of specialized instruments and resuscitation equipment. Field trips to radiology are like spacewalks, the patient tethered to life only by battery powered monitors and scuba tanks of oxygen.

“What’s his pressure?” Joonmyun asks.

“90 over 50,” a nurse replies.

“I don’t want to transport him until we get some blood into him.”

“It’s on its way,” the nurse says, while Zitao starts to do his neuro exam on Muyeol yet again. This time Muyeol can only move his fingers and toes on his right side. The left side remains motionless. The brain is rapidly failing.

“Dr. Kim, I need to scan him right now.” Zitao is edgy, wanting to transport Muyeol to radiology immediately, but Joonmyun is worried he’ll crash on the way.

“I need to hang the blood first,” he says. “His haematocrit’s only 28 and he’s had seven liters of fluids but look at that.” He points at the monitor. “His pressure is falling again –“

“I’m dying!” The patient suddenly cries out. He tries to pull the oxygen mask away from his face and a nurse grabs his arm and tells him to stay calm.

“But I can’t breathe!” He begins to struggle with the nurse, jerking her arm and rolling his head from side to side.

Joonmyun looks at the monitor. His heart rate, steady at 120 for the past half hour, has suddenly jumped to 190, and his oxygen saturation is falling as he watches.

“Pressure?”

“70 over palp.”

“Get anaesthesia here stat,” he orders. “And get me a chest tray - and call the cardiothoracic resident down here.”

Zitao stops making noises about getting his CT scan. He can see what’s happening, just like Joonmyun can. The crashing blood pressure can only be due to blood flooding out of a dissecting aorta. The dam has burst. Muyeol’s inability to breathe is a sign that his chest is filling with blood, crowding his lungs. His heart is pumping faster and faster to try and make up for the decreased blood volume. He’s shocking out, and opening his chest and clamping his aorta right here, right now, is his only chance of survival. Anaesthesia are on their way to insert an endotracheal tube and put Muyeol to sleep, but if they don’t arrive in the next thirty seconds, Joonmyun will have to do it with him awake.

Nurses and techs dart in and out from other ED rooms, bringing the equipment he needs. Joonmyun inserts another IV line and Zitao starts unwrapping the chest tray they bring him and preparing the chest hoses Joonmyun needs to drain blood and air from the chest. Neurosurgery has taken a back seat now, and every hand is needed. At the head of the bed, the respiratory technician is squeezing an ambu bag, forcing air into Muyeol’s lungs. Between squeezes, Muyeol gasps out a repeated phrase. “I’m dying,” he tells them. “I’m dying.”

He's right, Joonmyun thinks. He is absolutely dying, and if anaesthesia don’t get here right now, Junmeyon is going to have to start open heart surgery on a conscious patient. He pulls on sterile gloves just as the anaesthesiologist runs in and begins sedating the patient. The intern dumps a bottle of antiseptic solution over his chest.

“50 over palp,” someone calls. The EKG monitor shows runs of ventricular tachycardia. Muyeol’s heart is running dry. The respiratory tech is sweating with the effort of squeezing the ambu bag. Muyeol’s lungs are collapsing and he can’t force the air in. Joonmyun knows all this flurry of activity is useless. Like a plane with its hydraulics destroyed, Muyeol’s body is still flying right now, but it has no hope of ever landing safely. But he can’t give up. Not yet.

His cardiothoracic resident hasn’t arrived from the ward yet. “I need an assist!” he yells, and Kim Minseok is immediately opposite him, gloved and ready. The ED chief is a trauma specialist, not cardiothoracic, but it hardly matters now.

Joonmyun grabs a scalpel from the tray and plunges the blade to the hilt in Muyeol’s chest wall, cleaving a 12-inch window. A huge glob of clotted blood slithers out and plops to the floor at his feet, splattering them both liberally with blood. Minseok jams a metal rib spreader into the wound and they haul it open. Ribs crack and pop as the chest splays apart. Minseok holds back the foamy pink lung and Joonmyun starts to probe, looking for the rupture. Thin purple blood flows unchecked out of the open chest and onto their clothes and shoes. 

Muyeol’s blood pressure collapses. His tracing on the monitor writhes chaotically as the heart’s rhythm degenerates into useless quivering. An alarm sounds from the monitor. Joonmyun reaches deep into the chest and grabs the heart in his hand, squeezing the floppy ventricles.

Empty.

“Empty," he says aloud. He doesn’t need to elaborate. The frenzied activity in the room goes still. Joonmyun takes his hand out of Muyeol’s chest. Blood drips from his fingers onto the floor, and he stares grimly into the splayed-open chest while Minseok calls the time of death.

There is a short, heavy silence. When Joonmyun finally looks up, Minseok meets his eyes. Neither of them say anything. They’re both experienced enough to know that they’ve done everything they could, and also experienced enough to know that words aren’t going to help.

“Dr. Kim, will you talk to the family?” Zitao has been watching, his back pressed against the wall to stay out of the way. The thought comes to Joonmyun's mind that least now Zitao doesn’t have to worry about his chief’s neurosurgery schedule. He nods. This is a trauma surgery death, not a neurosurgery one, so the young resident is off the hook.

He takes off his gloves and instructs the intern to close the dead man’s chest. “It doesn’t have to be pretty,” he tells the shell-shocked kid. “Just close it up.”

A nurse brings him a fresh set of scrubs, and he changes and washes his arms and face, then gets her to check his hair for any residual splatters. Appearing before the family soaked in their loved one’s blood is not a good look. He leaves the trauma bay behind him, the intern stitching up the open chest and the cleaning staff already arriving to mop up the blood and sterilize the equipment and bay for use by the next patient. 

He walks slowly down the corridor. He’s done this so many times over the years that he’s developed a coping mechanism. It’s like an emotional dimmer-switch inside him. He doesn’t turn the lights all the way off, because he fears that if he goes into that emotional black hole, he’ll never find his way out again. Instead he turns himself down. He doesn’t allow the impact of what he’s just done to sink into him. He keeps the details clear in his mind, but the emotions attached to them are not allowed to surface. Not now. They will have to surface at some point, maybe after today’s shift, or maybe at the end of the week when he gets some days off in a row, and then he’ll have to deal with them, but he can’t do that now.

He sits down opposite the waiting couple. They’re pressed close together. Their faces beg him to tell them there was a miracle, to tell them he saved their son, to tell them there is still hope. His right hand, always so steady in surgery, begins to tremble. He covers it with his left to hide it. He takes a deep breath, focuses, speaks.

“Four hours ago, your son’s car was in a head-on collision with another vehicle.” They’ve heard it already, but people in states of acute worry forget and distort things easily, and he’s found repeating the situation helps, in some small way, to set the scene and prepare them for what’s to come. “He was brought here with a severe head injury and devastating internal injuries. We did everything we could. But he has died.”

He watches their entire universe fly apart. In front of him, their lives disintegrate and scatter like dust in the wind, into a thousand fragments, a thousand directions. Joonmyun’s words have destroyed everything about who they were, who they are, and who they will be. They are no longer parents. The twenty-one years of love they have poured into their son have been snatched away, leaving them as empty as the floppy, bloodless heart Joonmyun held in his hand.

He sits, squeezing his right hand as hard as he can so that it will stop trembling. He forces his emotional dimmer switch to its lowest setting. He presses his feelings into a small box in his head, to be opened and looked at later, when he doesn’t need to be the calm one, the responsible one, the one in charge. When he can be alone.

Pastoral services arrive and take over sitting with the parents. A few minutes later, Joonmyun goes back into the trauma bay. He will stand quietly in the corner while the parents say goodbye. He will answer any questions they might have. He will be one more person who will never forget their son.

He survives the rest of his shift and walks in the door of his sunny, glowingly clean apartment a few hours later. His wife, her belly swelling visibly now that she’s in her sixth month of pregnancy, greets him with breakfast laid out on the table. She’s wearing one of the new maternity dresses they bought last weekend, the silky grey-green one she’d said was more suitable for work than the pale yellow one with little pink flowers that Joonmyun likes her in better. In fifteen minutes she’ll go to teach math at the local primary school, and leave him in their beautiful apartment. Alone.

She kisses him hello. “How was work?”

“Fine,” Joonmyun says. He pulls her closer and rubs his hand gently over the curve that is their son growing inside her. “It was fine.”

\---

Jongin has a 35-year-old soccer player on his table this morning. They spoke together yesterday about his injury and his hobby and how he tore his meniscus. Yu Changmin told him about his dreams of becoming world-famous as a child and Jongin, in turn, was an enthusiastic listener. He’s not fascinated enough with soccer to support a favourite team, but he’s learned enough about the game to engage in conversation, and it helps him connect with his patients. Jongin likes his patients to be people, not body parts. It may be parts of Changmin’s meniscus he’s about to remove, and a knee is a knee, regardless of who it belongs to - but orthopedics is more than that to Jongin, and it’s a definite bonus that the outcomes of orthopedic surgeries are mostly successful and table deaths happen very rarely. Now he’s scrubbed in and is watching the OR team prepare Changmin for surgery. 

The head OR nurse has hung a curtain in front of Changmin’s face so he won’t be able to distract Jongin while the surgery is performed, but he will be conscious during the whole procedure, only getting local anaesthesia around his knee. It doesn’t matter to Jongin whether or not his arthroscopy patients are under general or local anaesthesia. He might even prefer them when they’re not completely under. He has performed so many arthroscopies that a little conversation here and there is welcome. 

“Do you feel this?” He makes a small incision on the side of Changmin’s knee. The nurse at Changmin’s head chuckles at a facial expression he makes, perhaps one of exaggerated pain, but his answer is “no”. Jongin pricks him with the scalpel once more, just to make sure, but there is no reaction from Changmin. 

He’s used to watching the screen while he operates and his fingers work on their own as they lead the tiny camera to Changmin’s meniscus injury and make another small incision to get the small instrument inside. Jongin stares intently at the screen as he navigates the tiny structures and tissues. With extreme precision, he cuts off a small piece of Changmin’s meniscus and pulls it out of the joint, before going back in to remove the last part.

The surgery is quick and successful as usual, and Jongin pats Changmin’s shoulder before he leaves the nurses to dress the small wounds. Recovery from arthroscopy is usually great and Changmin is likely to be discharged tomorrow. He’ll be back in a couple of weeks for Jongin to assess the success of the procedure, but he feels pretty sure it has made a difference. Changmin might never get to be the professional soccer player he dreamed of when he was a kid, but he might never have been anyway. He’ll be back on his feet quickly. 

Outside the OR and back in the scrubbing area, Jongin removes his face mask and stares at his reflection in the mirror. The mask and cap always mess up his hair, so he always looks a little less put together after a surgery. Many people wouldn’t think anything of it. Standing in an OR and cutting into bodies is not something just anybody can do, and Jongin is very satisfied with his job, but sometimes he can’t help wishing he could do it without ending up with his hair all flat where the cap was and sticking straight out at the sides where it ends. 

He rubs his head vigorously with his hand, trying to un-flatten his hair, and scowls when the result is him looking like he’s just gotten out of bed. He gives up and continues changing out of his scrubs. When he has thrown away his gown, he grabs his doctor’s coat and leaves the OR.

When he gets back to the orthopaedic ward and checks his phone, it lights up with multiple text messages. He’s back here to make a few consults before his next surgery after lunch. Jongin likes to squeeze in as much as possible in his schedule so there is never a dull minute. It matters to Jongin that his patients get the best care he can possibly give them. A nurse raises her eyebrow at him when she notices his phone light up through his white coat pocket with another message, and Jongin sends her a sheepish smile. They all knew him as a highly eligible bachelor when he started at this hospital, but he is no longer single, and if he’s not careful, rumours will spread fast. Jongin would very much like to prevent that. He appreciates the line between personal and professional a lot more than he once did, and this is a brand new relationship he would like to explore without having to tell anyone about it. 

Jongin finishes his last morning consultation a couple of minutes after midday. He has a couple of new messages on his phone from a friend, but he ignores them. He has somewhere to be and he’s a little late. He rushes through the hospital in long strides, does a spectacular slide through the closing doors of the elevator that his soccer-playing patient would have applauded to see, and rides it down to the ground floor where the open cafeteria is located. It’s mostly used by patients and their relatives or friends, but anybody is welcome. The food there is a little more expensive than at the staff cafeteria on the 14th floor, but Jongin doesn’t care too much about the cost of eating with his new girlfriend when she has taken the time to get here, just to be with him during his busy workday. 

A small woman with dark brown hair in a ponytail waits at the entrance. She’s staring at her phone and pretending not to look lost, but Jongin notices the way her foot nervously taps the floor and her finger twists a lock of hair in circles. 

He slows down and tries not to sound too out of breath when he gets close enough to call her name. She looks up at his voice and lights up into a smile. Her eyes glimmer and she just looks so incredibly beautiful. Jongin feels his heart skip a beat. He is a little ashamed of the quick glance he casts around him to make sure there’s none of his coworkers around before he locks eyes with her and reciprocates her smile. 

“Hey,” she says softly when he’s standing in front of her. Jongin feels his smile widen even more. It probably looks a little creepy, but he can’t help it. He’s just so happy. 

“Hey,” he answers in a whisper. They stand there, just looking at each other, for what feels like eternity but is probably only a few seconds before a gurgling sound issues from his stomach. Jongin can feel the heat of embarrassment crawl up his ears and he has to force himself not to childishly cover them with his hands. Sohee just smiles as she grabs his hand, links their fingers, and drags him into the cafeteria. 

There are a lot of people eating lunch, patients and relatives alike, so nobody looks at the couple in the corner. Sohee has ordered haemul pajeon and Jongin is waiting for his samgyetang to cool enough for him to eat it. Sitting here with Sohee makes him feel like he’s far away from doctors and surgeries and responsibilities. She smiles when she notices that he’s watching her with a soft gaze.

“Do I stink?” she asks. Jongin blinks, returning from his haze.

“What are you talking about?” 

Sohee wrinkles her nose cutely. “I didn’t shower before I came here, so I probably stink of predators.” 

Jongin has no idea how predators smell, but he has seen and smelt so many disgusting bodily fluids in his time as a medicine student that nothing can deter him anymore. Perhaps with the exception of sputum.

“I think you smell lovely,” he says around his spoon and his words get muffled. It might be better this way. Jongin can’t seem to stop himself saying such cheesy things when it comes to Sohee, and his ears go even hotter. They eat in silence and Jongin sneaks his hand over the table to play with her pointer-finger. She just looks at him softly and lets him continue his careful lifting and dropping of her finger. 

Sohee finishes her lunch long before Jongin. When she points it out, Jongin pouts and complains that she’s too beautiful and he can’t focus on eating. Sohee doesn’t believe him. She moves her chair so she’s sitting next to him.

“Shall I spoon feed you?” she asks innocently. Jongin whips around and stares at her in horror.

“N-no!” he stammers. Sohee laughs out loud, and even though Jongin is mortified at the prospect of being spoon fed, he can’t be angry with her. His heart is beating a little harder from embarrassment, but her laughter is a blessing to his ears. 

“Then eat your lunch, Dr. Kim.” Sohee hands him his spoon. His soup has gone cold, but he doesn’t care. He’ll happily eat cold soup if it gives him a bit longer with her. She tells him about the lions she has been working with this morning and how she took a walk around the park with the beautiful blue-and-gold macaw that resides in their merchandise shop during opening hours. Jongin listens carefully to every detail, and wonders if one day he’ll have enough time off work to visit her in the zoo. Sohee talks so passionately about her animals, and Jongin wonders if he sounds the same when he tells her about his patients. When he finishes the last spoonful of soup, she presses her lips quickly against his cheek. 

“Good boy,” she whispers, and Jongin feels himself go bright red. She just laughs again, and his heart soars so high that a heart monitor would probably think he was going into fib. He could listen to her laugh all day.

“What time is it?” he asks her when the chatter around them dies down a little. Sohee turns around in her seat to find a wall clock. 

“My lunch is over time.” She sighs and turns back around to face Jongin, looking disappointed. He wants to kiss her, but he's in public and he's far too shy for that, so instead he gently threads a hand through her hair, messing up her ponytail. When he lets go, she whines about having to redo her hair, and Jongin’s response is to run a hand through it one more time to mess it up slightly more. Sohee narrows her eyes at him and scolds him gently, but Jongin knows not to take it too seriously. 

“Can I come over tonight?” he asks when she steps away from the table. Jongin gets up as well, reaching out towards her hand and Sohee takes it instinctively. 

“Sure. Anything you want to talk about?” she looks concerned, and he thinks it’s so sweet how she worries about him when she’s the one working with freaking lions. He shakes his head.

“No, I just want to hang out with you,” he says, and Sohee smiles.

“When are you off?” 

“Seven.” Jongin leads her out of the cafeteria and towards the main entrance to the hospital. People file in and out around them, but standing here with Sohee makes it all blur into the background. 

“See you at eight, then?” Jongin answers with a nod and they say goodbye. He watches her disappearing back as if she’s the only thing in the universe, and his smile slips. I am in love with her, he suddenly realises, and the thought makes him feel like he’s been drenched in ice cold water. It scares him. Feeling like this about a girl again scares him. 

Dread crawls up his back and a familiar tension settles in his shoulders as he makes his way back to the orthopedic ward to finish his consultations before his last surgery of the day. 

  
\---

  
As soon as the last patient before lunch leaves Sehun’s office and the door has shut behind her, he pulls his phone from his pocket. He’s not technically supposed to have his personal phone with him during work hours. The dermatology department has very high standards in their outpatient care and the section chief thinks his employees will be distracted if they carry their personal phones, but Sehun breaks this rule every day without even a squeak from his conscience. He can do his job perfectly even with his phone in his pocket. He didn’t get into the highly competitive dermatology residency by being lazy or distracted. 

A KakatoTalk message is waiting for him when he looks at the lock screen. He’s about to open it when someone knocks on the door to his office. He hurriedly shoves his phone under a patient information printout as the door opens and the secretary pops her head inside. 

“Dr. Oh,” she says. Sehun sends her a polite smile. It’s a good thing she isn’t a mind reader, though, because he isn’t thinking particularly polite thoughts right now. “Your 1 o’clock appointment has arrived early and she's demanding to be seen now.” 

Sehun sighs. In theory he wouldn't mind pushing his lunch back by 15 minutes to see a patient, but he doesn’t want to, because he tries to synchronise it with Mikyung’s lunch break. Seeing this patient now will leave him with only 15 minutes to call her and he wants as much time as he can get. But the secretary is waiting and he can read the answer she wants in her eyes. He can hear a woman’s loud voice from the waiting area, and it sounds like she really will give them a lot of trouble if she has to wait until her actual appointment. He rubs his hand over his face.

“Okay. Give me two minutes and then send her through.” The secretary gives him a relieved smile and goes back to talk to the patient in the waiting area. Sehun retrieves his phone and gazes fondly at the picture on his lock screen. It’s him and Mikyung on a vacation to Jeju Island, where he’d taught her to surf and unwittingly turned her into a total addict of the sport. She’s grinning at him impishly from the photo, long hair salt-tousled, skin tanned a deep brown from the days spent in the water, arms and legs covered with golden sand. His arm is around her shoulders, and their surfboards are lying on the sand behind them. His chest gives a dull pang even as he smiles. God, he misses her.

Her message is still waiting, telling him she’s ready for him to call. Sehun curses himself for being too nice. He quickly messages to tell her he can’t call because he has a patient. The reply he receives a few seconds later is a sad-faced emoji and a heart. Sehun feels just as sad as the emoji.

With the phone back in his pocket, he finds his 1 o’clock appointment on his screen and rereads her referral. Then he gets up and sticks his head out of his office door.

“Myung Hana,” he calls into the waiting area, and a 53-year-old woman gets up. She’s scruffily dressed and it looks like her hair hasn’t been washed in weeks. He holds his breath when she passes him into his office, mentally crossing his fingers that this isn’t a pus-oozing wound of some kind. He closes the door behind them and crosses the room to sit back down beside his desk.

“What’s the problem, Hana?”

She immediately starts undressing, sweater and sweat-soaked t-shirt falling onto the floor. She turns her back to him and rather awkwardly tries to point at a mole on her shoulder blade.

“This.”

Sehun rolls his chair a little closer to her and looks at it. 

“What has been going on with it?” he asks, spinning around to his desk to grab a pair of latex gloves. His gloved fingers touch the mole and poke carefully around it. It’s quite big, very dark, and the border is irregular. To Sehun's practiced eye, it looks a lot like melanoma.

“It’s getting bigger,” Hana says.

“Have you noticed it bleeding or itching?” He turns away from her again to get his dermatoscope and a bit of oil. Hana starts talking about how she thinks it has been itching more and maybe even bleeding, but Sehun isn’t really sure what to make of that information. It’s not bleeding or crusting right now. 

“Okay. Sit still, I’m going to take a closer look,” he says. The sour stench of old sweat stings in his nostrils as he leans closer to her shoulder, cursing himself for being a pushover and agreeing to see her early. He’ll probably have to excise this thing and that's going to take longer than the allocated 15 mintues. He's going to miss out on talking to Mikyung. He suppresses a deep sigh and puts the dermatoscope in front of the mole. The more he examines it, the more he suspects melanoma. When he has looked enough he pushes his chair back and puts the dermatoscope back on his table. 

“Turn around so we can talk, Hana,” he says, peeling off his gloves. She does as she’s told and faces him with a smile. Her teeth don't look to be in the best state either. Good thing he isn’t a dentist.

“So…?” she asks. Sehun is surprised she doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’s going to say. Usually patients who've been referred to the hospital have already seen their GPs and are at least aware of the chance of bad news.

“Did..." he glances quickly at his screen for the name of her GP. "Did Dr. Shin talk to you about what this might be?” 

Hana shrugs. “He just said it needed further testing,” she answers. Sehun's heart sinks. Her doctor could have at least prepared her for the possibility of cancer. He hates having to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no way around it. 

“I suspect it’s a melanoma. Do you know what that is?” 

Hana sits in her chair for a while, silent, as she thinks. When it finally hits her, her jaw drops. 

“Isn’t that cancer?” 

Sehun nods. “That’s right. I’d like to remove the mole now and send it to the lab for them to check it. I’ll give you a call with the result in a couple of days. If it’s positive, I’ll refer you to the oncology department.” He pauses to let her absorb the information. “Is that alright with you? Do you understand what’s about to happen and do you agree to proceed this way?” 

Hana shrugs and picks out some dirt from under her fingernail. “Do what you must, doctor.” 

By the time Sehun has excised the lesion, put a couple of absorbable sutures in the small, tidy wound he’s made in her back, and given her a printout with information about how to care for the skin surgery wound (which he really doubts she’ll follow, given her current state of personal hygiene, but he has to at least try) the 15 minutes he’d originally allocated her has stretched into 25. He leaves the specimen jar containing the probable melanoma with the secretary to send for analysis and walks quickly away from his office, speed-dialing Mikyung as he makes his way to the elevator. The staff cafeteria is located four floors above him, but Mikyung picks up the call just as the elevator doors slide open, revealing a couple of nurses and an orderly pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Sehun gestures apologetically as he backs away, turning to head for the stairwell instead. It would be impolite to use his phone in the confined space, and he doesn't feel comfortable about a bunch of strangers listening in while he chats to his girlfriend.

“I’m sorry, Mikyung,” he says as he pushes through the heavy fire door and starts climbing the concrete stairs. His voice echoes a little, as do his footsteps. “I had to do an excision.”

“Yuck, yuck, double yuck,” Mikyung chants, and he laughs, imagining her shuddering. It’s so easy to gross her out, and she looks so cute with her face all scrunched up, that he really has to hold back on teasing her a lot more than he already does. At least he’s learned his lesson about sending her close-up photos of the interesting-looking bits of diseased tissue he’s found on - or cut out of - various patient’s bodies. She had refused to speak to him for three whole days after the last one. “Don’t talk about work,” she tells him. “I only have four minutes of my lunch break left.”

“I’ll video call you this evening to make up for it,” Sehun promises as he climbs. “Is it hot down there?”

“Boiling. I can’t believe it’s almost October. A colleague and I are going to grab some waves after work. The swell’s supposed to pick up this afternoon.”

“Sounds fun,” Sehun says, wishing he could join her.

“Damn, I have to go. Call me later.”

“I will.” He hangs up and glances at the sign on the wall that tells him he’s on the 13th floor. One more to go. He picks up his pace as he rounds the corner and nearly falls headlong over a person in a white coat sitting silently on the stairs, back against the wall as he stares blankly into space. Sehun catches himself on the handrail with a muffled curse, and the person gives a startled glance up at him. Sehun is surprised to recognize Dr. Kim Jongdae from obstetrics and gynaecology. They’ve met quite a few times as their sub-specialties often cross over. They’ve been to training and seminars together, and consulted each other on gynaecological skin disorders. They’re friendly enough, but their relationship has never moved beyond work.

“Sorry, Sehun,” Jongdae says, moving his legs out of the way. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

Sehun wonders how that’s even possible, considering he’d been talking on his phone and the way his footsteps were echoing. Jongdae must have been spacing out big-time. And what is the ob-gyn doing sitting in the emergency stairwell all on his own anyway? He hesitates, torn between leaving him alone as he apparently wants to be, and asking him if something is wrong. Sehun isn’t good with this kind of thing, and he’s not sure they’re close enough for him to be asking the other doctor personal questions.

There’s a short silence while he dithers, during which Jongdae resumes his empty stare at the wall and seems to forget he’s there. Sehun thinks wistfully of the cheese sandwich he’s planning on getting from the cafeteria. Then he thinks of what Mikyung would want him to do if she could see him now. That decides it.

“Um, Jongdae?” he starts, hating how awkward he sounds, hating how awkward he feels looming over the smaller man sitting on the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jongdae says listlessly. He doesn’t look at Sehun though, and it’s so unusual. Sehun’s never seen him without a bright smile on his face. It’s like all the light has gone out of him.

“Are you sure?”

Jongdae finally looks at him. “Don’t worry,” he says, his voice a little lighter. “Nothing’s wrong. I just needed a quiet minute or two.”

“Okay,” Sehun says doubtfully. It’s not like he can force Jongdae to talk to him. The other man stands up and throws him a reassuring smile before starting to make his way down the stairs. Sehun turns and resumes his upward climb. He gets his sandwich, then finds he doesn’t have time to sit down and eat it before his next appointment. He eats in the elevator on the way back to his office, catching crumbs with his hand as best he can, and his unusual encounter with Jongdae fades to the back of his mind.

When he gets home that evening, he video calls Mikyung as he promised.

“Hi, gorgeous,” she smiles, and his heart makes the swelling sensation it always does when he sees her. He wishes he could reach through the screen and pull her close the way he wants to. She’s obviously been surfing as she mentioned earlier. Her thick black hair is messed into salty tangles and the sun-freckles have come out on her nose and cheekbones.

“How was the surf?” he asks.

“Great. Only about four foot, but well formed, at least until the tide turned. Did I tell you one of my colleagues surfs? He lives in the next suburb. He says he’ll pick me up so I don’t have to take my surfboard on the bus, and he’s going to show me some of the local breaks.”

“Sounds great.” Sehun suddenly realizes that he’s starving. The cheese sandwich was more than six hours ago. He props up his phone on the kitchen counter so he can still see her and starts opening cupboards, taking out a pot and a packet of instant ramyun. “What’s his name?”

“Choi Yoochun. He’s a longboarder, though.” She grins as he pulls a face.

“A longboarder! Always taking up the entire wave with those giant tree trunks they call surfboards,” he snarks as he starts to boil water. “Don’t get lured in. I didn’t teach you to surf to have you converted to longboarding.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m loyal to my shortboard. I don’t think I could physically paddle one of those planks out back anyway. I have no idea how he gets it under the waves.”

“I’ll bring my board down next time,” Sehun says. “You guys can show me the local breaks -”

“Oh Sehun,” Mikung interrupts, leaning towards the camera. “Are you having ramyun for dinner?”

He freezes, caught in the act of breaking the instant noodles into the pan. Crap. He forgot she could see him.

“Baby, we talked about this,” she sighs. “Ramyun is not nutritious. It doesn’t have any vitamins or minerals. You need to eat proper food. You’re a doctor, why do you not know this?”

“I do know it,” Sehun protests. “I do eat nutritious food. Sometimes.”

“What did you have for lunch?”

“…a cheese sandwich.”

“Breakfast?”

He hesitates. “Does coffee count as breakfast?”

“No, Sehun, it does not count as breakfast.” She shakes her head long-sufferingly, but he can see the worry slipping through her teasing.

“Don’t look like that," he says. He feels bad, making her worry about him. He knows nutrition is important, but he never has time or energy to cook, and the things he makes don’t taste as good as hers anyway. It just makes him miss her even more. “I promise I’ll eat something with vegetables in it tomorrow.”

“You better,” she says, the worry replaced by sudden mischief. “Or I’ll tell my mom you’re not eating properly, and you know what will happen then.” She laughs as his face goes horror-struck. He does know. Mikyung’s mother will go on a weekend-long cooking spree, and then descend on him with enough food to feed the entire Korean army for a week.

He changes the subject hastily. “What else is new down there? How’s the house? No issues?”

“Oh right!” A stricken expression comes onto her face. “I was going to tell you! Something terrible happened!”

He puts the lid on his ramyun and turns to pay more attention. “What happened?”

“I saw a mouse run across the kitchen floor this morning!” She looks so comically horrified that he has to fight hard not to grin. “It ran under the bench. There must be a mouse hole under there. It was so scary. I couldn’t get off the table for like, fifteen minutes. I’m terrified it’ll come back out when I’m not looking - ”

“Wait,” Sehun’s grin is defeating him. “You’re scared of mice? How did I not know that?”

“Don’t laugh at me! It’s embarrassing," she pouts. “Our apartment in Seoul doesn’t have any, so why would I tell you?”

“How can you be scared of mice? They’re cute!”

“It’s the tails,” she shudders. “Something about them just creeps me out.”

Sehun considers this. “What about a mouse without a tail?”

She stares at him as if he’s just asked the dumbest question in the universe. Sehun wonders why. Surely it’s a sensible question. If she’s creeped out by the tails, mice without tails should be fine, right?

“Sehun, that is horrifying,” she says flatly. Okay, apparently not.

“What about Mickey Mouse?”

“Sehun.” He knows that warning tone, but he can’t help it. It’s like the way he can’t resist sending her pictures of his latest skin lesion excision.

“What about Jerry from Tom and Jerry?”

“Sehun!”

“What about Danger Mouse?”

“OH SEHUN!”

He cracks up, and then has to suddenly lunge for the stove and rescue the pan of ramyun that’s just boiled over and is flooding water everywhere. The metal pan handle has heated up and burns his palm.

“Ow!” He yells, dropping the pan back onto the stove with a crash. The water in the pan decides to imitate a tsunami, and noodle-filled broth sloshes all over the bench and starts raining down onto the floor. He jumps back to avoid the hot water splashing on his legs and feet, flapping his burnt hand.

“Oh God,” he hears Mikyung groan. When he glances at the screen, she’s covered her face with both hands and is peeping out from between her fingers. “You’re a disaster. A total disaster. I should never have left you up there on your own. Go run your hand under cold water.”

“I’ll just clean up this mess –"

“No. Hand first,” she tells him firmly, “clean up second. You won’t be able to send me any pictures of someone’s revolting melanoma if you can’t use your hand.”

He obeys. His hand isn’t badly burnt, but he knows she’ll never leave him alone if he doesn’t look after it immediately. Things were simpler, he thinks as the cold water runs over his stinging palm, before he had a girlfriend. When he was a med student, he’d been too focused on the perfect grades he’d needed to get into his chosen specialty to think about anything else, and his first years of residency in the competitive field of dermatology had eaten up every spare second of his life. The habits of those days are easy to slip back into now that she’s not there to remind him how a responsible adult should look after himself. Without her, he has nobody to make him a healthy dinner and pack the leftovers for his lunch the next day, nobody to stop him from taking extra shifts because she wants to go to the beach or watch a baseball game with him, nobody to come up behind him at his computer when he’s been researching half the night after working all day and hug him from behind until he agrees to stop studying and come to bed.

Those days were simpler, yes, but they were also lonelier. Much lonelier. He hadn’t realized just how bad things had gotten until Mikyung had come into his life. She had shown him how wonderful things can be when there’s someone who loves you, and someone you love back, to share the endlessly repeating days with and make them worth living.

His hand goes numb under the cold water while Mikyung tells him about the article she’s hoping to get published on the news website tomorrow, and Sehun finally lets himself think about the feeling he’s been refusing to acknowledge since she left to go and work in Busan. 

Mikyung has ruined him. He’s no good at being single anymore. Now that she’s shown him how life can look with her, life without her seems harder than it ever did before he met her. He hadn’t known what he was missing then, and now he does. He misses her so painfully that his heart seems to ache right up into his throat.

He doesn’t want to be here, in Seoul, while she’s down there in Busan. He wants to be with her. Now. All the time.

He’s lonely, Sehun realises. He’s lonely again.


	4. October 2nd

Kwon Shiyeon’s uterine muscle layer is a dark bluish-grey, full of infiltrated blood. It’s a bad sign, and Jongdae’s heart sinks to see it. He makes his second cut and immediately blood spills over his hands, far more than there should be. The uterus is filled with blood that is escaping in any way it can, flooding from the vagina as well as from the surgical wound, so much that he can hear it pouring like a waterfall through a tube and into the large plastic collection receptacle on the floor.

“Suction,” he says. Two surgery assistants place their tubes, but it’s like trying to bail out a sinking boat with a couple of straws. His hands are submerged in hot, dark blood as he gets his hands around the foetus. He lifts it out in both hands, raining blood, and an assistant clamps the umbilical cord just as the mother’s vital signs crash. Jongdae hands the premature infant to the waiting neonatologist without turning away from the mother. He doesn’t know if the baby is alive, but that’s not his problem anymore. He needs to remove Shiyeon’s torn uterus to stop the bleeding. She’d been hemorrhaging on arrival to the ED, and rapid ultrasonography had shown that the placenta had torn away from the uterus, causing massive bleeding from all the blood vessels that supplied the growing foetus.

“I can’t see!” he snaps at the assistants with their suction tubes, but they can’t do more than they’re already doing. Again he plunges both hands into the pool of blood in her abdomen, feeling blindly for the bleeding vessels he needs to tie off. Shiyeon is still in cardiac arrest and three theatre staff are rotating on chest compressions, but Jongdae has already felt the difference in her blood pressure against his hands, and he doesn’t need the monitors to tell him that her heart is no longer pumping. She’d already lost far too much blood when she arrived at the emergency department, and the transfusions hadn’t had a chance of catching up.

He keeps working on removing the torn uterus while the interns continue to resuscitate, until after many long minutes have passed, the anaesthesiologist quietly prompts him. “Dr. Kim?”

Jongdae knows what she’s getting at. He’s working uselessly now. He needs to stop. He should have stepped back minutes ago, should have let them stop the exhausting task of performing chest compressions. He’s in charge here, and being in denial over the fact that he’s lost another patient is helping nobody.

He takes his hands out of Shiyeon’s abdomen.

“Stop,” he says, and closes his eyes. In the sudden quiet he hears the drops of blood falling from his fingers and onto the floor acutely.

“I’m ready to call the code. Any objections?” The words are routine, not even really a question. Nobody is going to object to this code, and the silence confirms it. He goes through the motions of checking for pupillary response and carotid pulse, then looks at the room clock. “Time of death, 14:03.”

He steps back from the table and lets Shin Nara, the third-year resident assisting him, take over to close up the body. He keeps walking slowly backwards until he comes up against the wall and watches numbly as the interns start to clear up. He’ll have to go and talk to Shiyeon’s husband soon, but he just can’t face it yet.

He lets his head fall back against the wall with a quiet thump. His fists clench and unclench by his sides. He can feel the slipperiness of her blood on his gloves, going slightly tacky as it dries. He replays his actions. Was there something he could have done differently, some way he might have saved her? He doesn’t think so. Like Lee Rijin the other week, this death wasn’t due to any error of his. He didn't lose control of her case - he never had control in the first place. He never had a chance.

This isn’t supposed to happen to him. He became an obstetrician for the joy of bringing new life into the world. He’s not supposed to feel it slip away beneath his hands.

There’s a dull thump, and someone swears. He glances towards the sound to see that one of the interns has knocked over the receptacle that was catching the vaginal hemorrhage, and several liters of blood is spreading across the operating room floor. The interns jump back from the sudden flood. Nara, still closing up at the table, gives an irritated sigh, but doesn’t move from her position as the spill laps against her plastic shoe-covers. Jongdae’s jaw clenches. They shouldn't be so careless.

“What is this, the biblical flood?” one of the interns jokes.

“Build me an ark,” another intones, and they both snort with laughter.

Something inside Jongdae snaps. He pushes away from the wall and grabs both interns by their shoulders, shoving them backwards towards the door.

“That is completely inappropriate,” he says furiously. “A person has just died!” The interns come up against the closed OR door and one of their elbows knocks the opening button. The door swings open and he shoves them out into the hall. A couple of orderlies arriving to clean the OR freeze in place, but Jongdae ignores them. Emotions he's not calm enough to identify crash around inside him, and he yells his anger and frustration at the interns until the girl is cringing, the boy is visibly holding back tears, and Jongdae’s voice is starting to shake. He turns away and manages to stop yelling long enough to take in a deep breath and slowly let it out. There’s a ringing silence. When he turns back to the interns, they both flinch.

“Go,” he says wearily. “Get out of my sight.”

They flee down the hallway, and it's only then Jongdae realizes that he has an audience. The orderlies had crept inside the OR during his tirade, but his yells must have attracted the attention of all the nearby nurses and residents. They’re standing against the walls, holding their various clipboards and equipment, and they’re all staring. Jongdae’s anger has all been shouted out, leaving him feeling incredibly tired.

“Don’t you all have anything better to do?” he asks, and stands limply in the corridor while they disappear in all directions. Thank goodness there’s a long stretch of corridor and a set of closed doors between himself and the family waiting area. It wouldn't be good for the public to see a surgeon lose his cool like that.

He needs to clean himself up. Numbly, he goes into the scrubbing area and washes, throws his blood-soaked garments away, and changes into fresh scrubs. He survives the meeting with Shiyeon’s husband and the rest of his on-call shift. He doesn’t allow himself to think until his shift ends at 7 pm.

Usually he looks forward to seeing Ahreum and the kids at the end of the day and tries to get home in time to at least kiss his children goodnight before they fall asleep, but tonight he doesn’t feel confident in his ability to summon the smiling face he always wants to show them. He has to get his head together before he faces his family, and there’s something he needs to do. He messages Ahreum that he’ll be late and heads towards the NICU. He fears the worst, but if he wants to have a hope of sleeping tonight, he needs to find out what happened to Kwon Shiyeon’s baby.

As the elevator rises towards the NICU floor, he closes his eyes, recalling how he’d yelled at the interns. He sighs. With the clarity of hindsight, he knows he reacted disproportionately. He was upset about losing another patient, but it wasn’t right to take out his frustration on the interns, even if they were insensitive. Jongdae can’t even remember the last time he lost his temper so badly. Then again, in his specialty, he very rarely loses patients, and he’s never been put to the test of losing two in such quick succession.

It’s after visiting hours, so the floor is very quiet. Through the glass walls, the lighting in the NICU is dim. There are two nurses working at the computers behind the reception desk. One of them glances up at the sound of his approaching footsteps. His eyes flick to Jongdae’s chest, reading the ID badge clipped to the breast pocket of his white coat.

“Dr. Kim, good evening. What brings you here?”

Jongdae attempts a smile. “I just wanted to check on a baby I delivered earlier by emergency C-section.”

“I’ve just come on shift. I’ll need to look up our admissions from today. Has the child been named?”

“Not that I’m aware of. The family name is Kwon. The parents are Jinyoung and Shiyeon.”

The nurse types the names into his computer while Jongdae waits, trying to mentally prepare himself to hear the news he dreads.

“Ah, here we are,” the nurse reads out the details. “Male baby “Kwon” was admitted at 1340. He is stable and breathing independently.” The nurse looks up and smiles. “Sounds like you delivered a young fighter, Dr. Kim.”

Jongdae lets out a shaky breath and hurriedly turns away to hide his emotions. He hadn’t completely realised how much he’d been dreading bad news, and the relief is incredible. He feels like a hand had been clenched around his heart all day, and now it’s just let go.

When he’s controlled his expression, he turns back to the nurse. “Alright if I go in?”

“Go ahead,” the nurse nods at the glass doors. “He’s in incubator 6. Oh, make sure the intern on observation duty is still awake while you’re in there. Her name is Lee Kyungri. I swear, if I didn’t know she was an intern, I’d think she had narcolepsy.”

Jongdae laughs. “Sounds about right.”

He sanitises his hands and the glass automatic doors slide open. He steps into the warm dimness of the NICU, where rows of clear plastic incubators sustain tiny, precious lives. The infants are attached to various monitors and IV lines, and most of them are on bubble CPAP oxygen therapy to assist lungs not yet developed enough to breathe easily on their own. Jongdae glances around and spots the intern in a rocking chair in the corner of the room, where parents can sit to hold their babies if they're stable enough to be held. Her head has fallen back, her mouth is hanging open, and she’s snoring. Jongdae can’t help grinning. He’ll wake the intern up before he goes, but he might as well let her sleep a bit longer while he’s here. He doesn’t blame her for falling asleep. It’s so warm and quiet in here that it would be almost impossible not to, and the monitors will sound a loud alert if any of the infants stops breathing.

He finds incubator 6 and looks down at the baby boy sleeping inside it. He’s big for 30 weeks, probably close to 2 kilograms in weight, and as the nurse had mentioned, he’s not on bubble CPAP, already breathing well unaided. He’s wearing nothing but a diaper and a tiny red knitted hat. Jongdae watches the baby’s chest rise and fall beneath the pads of his heart rate monitor. As he watches, the baby moves his right arm a little and opens a pair of large, black eyes. He’s far too young to focus yet, but Jongdae finds himself smiling down at him anyway. He puts his hand into the incubator and strokes the baby’s palm with his index finger and is startled to feel the tiny fingers curl slightly. The grasp reflex doesn’t usually develop for another 2 weeks.

“You are a fighter, aren’t you?” he murmurs softly. “That’s good. You need to be.” His smile dims, thinking of Shiyeon, who never got to see her child, and this little boy, who will grow up without a mother.

“Hi,” a quiet voice says, and he glances to his right. The intern - Lee Kyungri, he recalls her name - has woken up and has come to stand beside him. She looks at him with a question in her eyes.

“I’m an obstetrician,” Jongdae explains. “I delivered this boy earlier.”

“Oh,” Kyungri’s face lightens and she beams at him. “You’re Dr. Kim! I was hoping I’d get to meet you.”

“Me?” Jongdae is puzzled. “Why?”

“This wee boy’s father was here this afternoon,” Kyungri tells him. “He told me that without you, he would have lost his son as well as his wife. He said he was too shocked to acknowledge you earlier, but he wanted me to thank you for him. I was going to email you, but I’m glad I got to tell you in person.”

Jongdae is both surprised and touched. He wouldn’t have blamed Kwon Jinyoung if the man had hated him forever for not saving his wife. He would never have dreamed of receiving thanks instead.

“He asked me your name, so I got it off the chart for him,” Kyungri continues. “And look, Dr. Kim!”

Jongdae leans forward to look where she’s pointing. There’s a detachable paper name slip on the front end of the incubator, and it’s been filled in with firm black characters. “Baby Kwon” has been given a name.

Kwon Jongdae.

\---

Kyungsoo stares at the reminder email he has just received. It’s a mismatch of clip-art balloons and a cursive font from the 90’s, and it looks atrocious. INVITATION, it says in big bold letters at the top in an ugly pink. It elaborates with _High School Reunion_ in an even uglier green. Kyungsoo closes the email hurriedly. It’s hurting his eyes to look at it. He selects the little checkbox next to the email and drifts his cursor to the trash can icon. He hovers over it longingly. It’s tempting. It’s very, very tempting. But he can’t quite bring himself to do it. Deleting the invitation would be immature, and wouldn’t solve his problem.

The reunion is this Saturday, and Kyungsoo needs to find a good reason not to go. He isn’t on call, he doesn’t have prior commitments - he doesn’t even have to visit his parents, which these days may actually be worse than the reunion. He could ask Dr Hwang to switch shifts with him, but trying to explain that he really, really wants to work instead of going to a “fun” high school reunion is going to get him more questions from his nosy colleague than he wants to deal with. It might be less stressful to just go to the reunion and escape after an hour or two.

He’s interrupted from his gloomy dilemma by his phone ringing.

“Hey, Dr. Do,” the resident in the ED starts. Kyungsoo closes his inbox so he can focus on whatever the resident wants now.

“We have a patient with sepsis-like symptoms and stomach pain. We suspect appendicitis or diverticulitis. Can we get a CT scan?”

Kyungsoo grabs a pencil and a small notepad.

“What’s the patient’s name?” he asks, and when the resident answers, he writes the name down for the technicians. “Kidney function?”

He doodles a little house on his notepad while the resident tries to find the correct patient results. Then he draws a tree beside the house, and a little dog beside the tree. What the heck is this resident doing? Could he not have looked up the blood test results _before_ calling Kyungsoo?

“His eGFR is 32,” the resident says after a small eternity, and Kyungsoo tries not to sigh too deeply. Oh well. He’ll have to do without contrast, but it should be sensitive enough for acute appendicitis. When the resident hangs up, he hands the note with the patient’s name to a technician and tells her it’s a non-contrast scan. The tech looks at the note and grins.

“What?” Kyungsoo asks grumpily.

“I like your picture,” the tech says, pointing to his doodle. Kyungsoo feels his ears start to go red.

“Just do the scan,” he tells her, trying to hide his embarrassment. He looks at the clock and stifles a sigh. It’s only 10 am? Not fair. He wants to go home.

Instead of going back into his office, he heads towards the break room to get another coffee. Heavy rain is pouring down outside the windows and it looks cold and miserable. October is supposed to have great weather, but today most certainly doesn’t live up to the reputation.

There’s no one in the break room except for him, so he sits at the table rather than going back to hide in his office. He stares down into his cup of coffee and the reunion invite floats back into his mind. His high school experience wasn’t exactly enjoyable. He wasn't badly bullied or ostracized, but high school isn't generally kind to kids who prefer to keep to themselves. Going to the reunion and having to admit to being a doctor will draw attention to him, attention he doesn’t want. Teachers will praise him on his intelligence, and old classmates will either congratulate him while secretly being annoyed that he’s supposedly more successful than them, or tease him, wondering how a weird loner like Kyungsoo became a doctor, because don’t they actually have to talk to patients?

Annoyance wells up in him. He doesn’t feel the need to prove his worth to his high school classmates, and he doesn’t see why people get so hung up on proving how successful they are. It’s inevitable that there’s going to be one-uppance going on, jealousy hidden behind false smiles and backhanded compliments, and they will all fall back into the social hierarchy from when they were in school together, because that’s what people do. Kyungsoo watches the rain pour down the window and imagines them all getting washed down a drain where they’ll stop bothering him. Old classmates, parents with expectations, and especially overconfident ED residents.

He’s distracted from a pleasant daydream of the ED resident who’s been repeatedly bothering him this morning swimming around in the sewer with the nameless clumps of grossness and the rats when the door opens and a couple of technicians enter. Kyungsoo nods in response to their greetings, and avoids any risk of being snared into small talk by getting up and heading back to his office, coffee in hand.

Back in front of his computer, he looks through the list of unfinished scans and notices the name of the potential appendicitis from the ED. They will want their results back quickly. He opens the images, but the grey tones of the abdomen show no signs of appendicitis. There’s a cyst in the left kidney, and the aorta is slightly enlarged, but neither of those are the cause of potential sepsis. He describes his findings on the computer system and goes back to work through the list of outpatients.

Time ticks by as more scans trickle in, and around midday he leaves his office to get his lunchbox from the break room. Three technicians are there, complaining loudly about the ED residents ordering too many irrelevant X-rays - a complaint Kyungsoo can strongly empathize with. There is definitely a lot of crap that gets sent to radiology without a purpose. Back in front of his computer, lunch box nestled between the edge of the table and his keyboard, he finds there’s a new chest X-ray waiting to be described, and sighs when he sees it's for the same patient who had the suspected appendicitis. The referral only says “pneumonia?”. He clicks in and the two pictures open up on his large screens. No pneumonia, perfectly fine lungs and heart. As he expected. It can wait to be described after lunch.

He has just taken his last bite of his kimbap when his phone rings again. He swallows quickly but ends up coughing as bits of rice get stuck in his throat. His voice is extremely hoarse when he answers. It’s the ED resident again.

“Remember Cha Shinil?” he asks. Kyungsoo looks at the CXR still up on his screens. In the corner the name Cha Shinil is noted, along with his date of birth.

“Yes?” He clears his throat, trying to get rid of the coarse feeling that’s still irritating his throat.

“My attending looked him over and we want a CT scan to see if there’s a dissection,” the resident states confidently.

Kyungsoo wishes he had choked on his rice. It would have been better than dealing with this idiocy. “A dissection?” he asks incredulously. “Why would there be a dissection? You said the patient had sepsis!”

There’s a small pause during which the noise of the ED seeps through.

“Yes, and that is still most likely, but his pain could suggest an aortic dissection.” The resident still sounds way too confident. Kyungsoo holds back on asking why the most fatal diagnosis is the last thing they look for. How serious can a dissection suspicion be if it’s not their first thought? He takes a deep breath before he answers.

“Sure, we’ll do a chest CT to rule out a dissection,” he says. He sounds sarcastic even to himself, but he’s sure this ED resident is so thick-skinned that his tone won’t even make a scratch in his confidence. This will be the patient's third trip to radiology in a single morning, and the techs are going to have the same questions about the pointlessness of looking for a dissection, but on the extremely remote chance there is something going on and Kyungsoo doesn’t find it, he’ll be the one with his head on the block. The resident doesn’t thank him when he hangs up, but Kyungsoo is used to that.

As predicted, the techs complain just as much as Kyungsoo wants to, but there really isn’t much he can do about it. As they’re waiting for Cha Shinil to arrive, a call comes through for a different patient. Cerebral catastrophe, the resident says. It’s a man who has suddenly gotten strong headaches and slight facial paralysis. Instead of heading back to his office when he has relayed the message, he stays behind and watches the technicians do the CT scans. He’ll have to glance over the two scans before the patients are sent back to the ED anyway and it’s a lot easier if he’s here. He won’t get much done in between anyway.

Their patient comes walking into radiology with a laptop under his arm. He looks well put-together and has no facial paralysis at all. So much for cerebral catastrophes. It’s almost a joke. The hospital treats radiology like they’re a bunch of Polaroid cameras, a tool that just spits out anything they want. They don’t seem to care how much time and resources they’re wasting by sending through patients for irrelevant imaging. Kyungsoo lets his eyes run down the grey tones on the computer screen as the CT head scan is performed on the completely fine patient. He doesn’t need to look it through in great detail to know the patient can be sent back to the ED for now. He’ll study the scan more thoroughly when he’s back in his office.

“Dr. Do?” a technician asks behind him. Kyungsoo turns around in his chair and looks up. “About Cha Shinil's chest CT - his eGFR is pretty low at 32, but I assume we’re still giving a full dose of contrast, right?”

Kyungsoo nods. “We have to, but do a non-contrast scan over the aorta first, just in case.”

The technician goes back to her coworker, who’s about to put an IV line in the patient. The wheeled chair he’s sitting on swiftly slides over to the scanner where they’re preparing Cha Shinil for his second CT scan of the day. He closes his eyes and tries to let the annoyance seep out of him, but just as he manages to convince himself not to care so much about the pointless CT, his mind decides to remind him he has a high school reunion to worry about. It’s better to focus on his work than the stupid reunion, so Kyungsoo opens his eyes again and moves closer to the screen. Nothing on the non-contrast scan shows anything outside of the enlarged aorta he found on the patient's first scan. The contrast scan isn’t any different. No surprises there, Kyungsoo thinks wearily as he sends the patient back to the ED.

At two minutes to seven when Kyungsoo is just about to get off work, he gets a call. It’s the ED resident again. Kyungsoo feels like throwing the phone out of his office window and throwing himself out after it. He stops himself before anything too dramatic happens, though. Maybe this is a different patient, not Cha Shinil. Maybe this request will actually make sense.

“Can we get an MRI of Cha Shinil? We think he might have gallstones in the bile duct that’s causing his infection.”

Kyungsoo wants to curse at the young doctor. “Ask me for an ultrasound, then,” he says, rather curtly.

“We want an MRCP instead of an ultrasound,” the resident says. Kyungsoo feels a headache starting to press at his temples.

“I'm not approving a non-emergency MRI at this time of day. If you really believe there are gallstones we haven’t found on the two previous CT scans, you can have an ultrasound. ” He rubs his head. This has been a stupid day filled with stupid people. He needs to go home and play video games and forget the real world exists.

The resident starts to argue, and while standing up to residents isn’t Kyungsoo’s strong point, there has simply been too much bullshit today. He refuses to back down. He is not going to allow this completely unnecessary MRI, and in the end, the resident accepts the ultrasound.

After closing up his office for the night, Kyungsoo finds his coworker and relays the message of the impending ultrasound before he leaves the radiology department. He has left his doctor’s coat in his office, so he’s dressed in his everyday clothes of a sweater and jeans. When the elevator door opens to take him back down to the ground floor, he finds himself face to face with Dr. Kim Jongdae, who is still wearing dark blue scrubs beneath his white coat. Jongdae looks rather down, but Kyungsoo isn’t sure he looks much better.

The two have always gotten along quite well when they meet. There’s something about Jongdae’s calmness that appeals to Kyungsoo. Sure, when he’s in the company of those crazy people Park Chanyeol and Byun Baekhyun, he can get a bit overexcited and loud, but on his own, he empathizes. Kyungsoo likes the obstetrician enough to consider him an almost-friend.

“Hey, Jongdae,” he says, and Jongdae looks up tiredly at the sound of his name. “Tough day?”

Jongdae gives him a faint smile. “You don’t look like you’ve had a much better day yourself,” he says.

Kyungsoo shrugs. “Nothing a few hours of Skyrim won't fix.”

Jongdae smiles a little more genuinely at that, but doesn't say anything more, and they ride the elevator down the last couple of floors in silence. On the ground floor, Jongdae turns to Kyungsoo before he can walk off.

“This might be a little out of the blue, but are you working on Saturday?”

Kyungsoo’s mind instantly flashes the pink and green invitation in front of his inner eyelids, and he scowls. “Unfortunately not,” he says. Jongdae looks taken aback, and Kyungsoo realises it's probably not normal to be complaining about not working on a weekend. Then an idea flashes into his mind. Having plans with Jongdae will give him the excuse he needs to not show up to his high school reunion and be the weird loner Kyungsoo again.

“You want to grab a beer Saturday evening?” he asks.

Jongdae gives a startled laugh. “What?”

“You asked me if I was working for a reason, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Jongdae still looks surprised, though. Maybe he hadn’t expected Kyungsoo to actually want to hang out with him. Kyungsoo can understand that. It’s not like he’s known for being a social butterfly.

“I could use a friend,” he elaborates, and Jongdae’s face softens into a smile. Behind it, though, he still looks a little grim. Today must have been a really bad day to make him look so defeated.

“I’ll see you on Saturday then,” Jongdae says, and turns to walk towards the employee changing rooms. Kyungsoo watches him go. It feels very weird to have admitted to needing a friend, but somehow, he doesn’t regret it.

He leaves the hospital with a little smile on his lips. It’s so small it’s barely there, but it’s enough to lift his spirits, just a little bit.

\---

On Saturday Jongdae meets Kyungsoo at a small restaurant and bar near the hospital. It’s not too much of a rowdy place, not like the sports bars that get so loud you can barely hear yourself think, let alone actually have a conversation without yelling yourself hoarse. Jongdae is still surprised that Kyungsoo actually agreed to meet him for something social outside of work. It’s got to be a first. Despite the radiologist's reputation for being cold, cranky, and possibly a snob, Jongdae has never felt any difficulty in talking to him. He thinks Kyungsoo is hiding under layers of protective standoffishness, and he wants to get to know the real Kyungsoo.

He arrives first, gets a table and sits down to wait. It occurs to him that there’s a distinct probability that Kyungsoo might not show up at all, and he has to hide an amused grin at the thought of potentially getting stood up. He takes out his phone and starts checking his email while he waits, glancing up every minute or so to check the door. A couple of minutes later he sees the radiologist come in and stare around the room through his thick, black-framed glasses. Jongdae stands up and waves to attract his attention.

Kyungsoo sees him and a strange expression crosses his face. For the second time Jongdae has to fight a smile, because it kind of looks like Kyungsoo wants to turn around and run straight back out. Jongdae’s not going to let him, though.

“Hey,” he calls, and gestures to the chair opposite. Kyungsoo walks over and Jongdae smiles at him. He only gets an inscrutable look in return, but he doesn’t mind. It’s clear to him that the other man isn’t very socially adept, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need friends, and his reserved nature just makes getting to know him more interesting. It’s actually refreshing, Jongdae thinks as they sit down and a waitress comes over to take their drinks order, to talk to someone who doesn’t feel the need to constantly chatter. When he hangs out with Baekhyun and Chanyeol, it’s always a lot of fun, but they always end up completely hyperactive, speaking over the top of each other and generally behaving like six-year-olds high on sugar, so hanging out with Kyungsoo is a nice change. He can actually speak without getting interrupted every three seconds.

“How was your day off?” Jongdae asks when they’ve taken a sip of beer.

“Good. I gamed all day,” Kyungsoo admits with a slight smile.

Jongdae makes an envious noise. “Oh, man. It's been a long time since I was able to do that.”

Kyungsoo stares at him, and Jongdae’s not sure whether it’s just the way Kyungsoo’s eyes are that make him look like he’s about to pin Jongdae to a card like he’s a biology specimen, or whether he actually thinks about things as intensely as he looks.

“You have kids, right?” Kyungsoo asks.

“Yeah,” Jongdae says. “My eldest girl, Chorong, is six, then my son Bodeul is four and little Mari is nearly two.”

“You must have had Chorong pretty young, then.”

“We were 23,” Jongdae says. “I guess it’s young, but Ahreum and I had been together since high school. There didn’t seem any reason to wait longer. We already knew we wanted to spend our lives together.”

“How did you know?” Kyungsoo sounds so intense that Jongdae is taken aback. Kyungsoo must see his surprise in his face, and quickly apologizes. “Sorry. Is that too personal a question?”

“No, not at all,” Jongdae gives him a reassuring smile. “I knew because...well, it’s always just been right for me to be with Ahreum. We were never shy with each other even though we were only high schoolers. We didn’t need anything passionate or dramatic. We just fit together, right from the start. Ahreum once said that passionate relationships are like matches that flare up and go out, but relationships that last are like glowing coals that stay warm all night. We’re like that.”

Kyungsoo nods slowly. He looks a little sad, Jongdae thinks. “Why do you ask?” he wonders.

Kyungsoo sips his beer before replying. “I’ve never really understood relationships,” he confesses. “My mother’s been pressuring me to get married lately, so I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what makes people want to get married, and why the idea makes me so uncomfortable.”

“You don’t have a partner?”

“No. I don’t want one. I like being me, you know? But mom really wants grandkids. Every time I see her, she’s on at me. She’s been talking about arranging blind dates for me lately.” He shakes his head, looking miserable. “I can’t go on a blind date. I just can’t.”

“It's not fair of your mom to put that kind of pressure on you,” Jongdae says. Kyungsoo shrugs and looks like he's about to say something else, but then his gaze shifts and fixes on something across the room. Jongdae turns to look where he’s looking and catches sight of a familiar figure sitting up at the bar. He recognizes Dr. Kim Minseok immediately. As the emergency department chief, he’s probably one of the most well-known doctors in the hospital. Jongdae immediately flashes back to his recent unhappy encounters in the ED. He doesn’t think he could cope with working there all the time, but as an emergency physician and trauma specialist, Minseok must be used to patient death.

“Sometimes relationships go really wrong, too,” Kyungsoo murmurs, almost more to himself than to Jongdae. His eyes are fixed on Minseok’s back. Jongdae watches too as the ED chief pours himself a shot of soju and knocks it back.

“What makes you say that?” he asks.

Kyungsoo nods at Dr. Kim. “Did you know he’s divorced?”

Jongdae shakes his head. He doesn’t know any personal details about the ED chief. He’s surprised Kyungsoo does. From the impression he has of Minseok, he’s a pretty private guy - kind of like Kyungsoo, in fact.

“Do you know him well?” he asks.

“Fairly well,” Kyungsoo answers. “I was an intern on my ED rotation when…” he trails off. “Sorry. I probably shouldn't talk about that.”

“What?” Jongdae wonders. Now he’s really curious. “Did something happen?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret,” Kyungsoo says hesitantly, “but he never talks about it, and not many people who worked at the hospital back then are still there.” He glances again at Minseok. He’s taking another shot. “I don’t think he even knows I know. I doubt he would remember I was there.”

“Okay, you have to tell me what you’re talking about,” Jongdae says. “I’m totally in the dark here. You know I won’t gossip.”

“His son died,” Kyungsoo says quietly. “It must be seven years ago now. Minseok resuscitated him at home, but he was brain dead when they arrived. I think he was six.”

Jongdae is stunned. He can’t help but think of his own six-year-old, and horror mixes in with his shock. Even the idea of losing her makes him feel sick. Minseok had been doing CPR on his son? He can’t even bear to think about doing CPR on Chorong. He shakes his head to get rid of the image. Compassion for Minseok strikes through him. He would never have dreamed he was hiding a tragedy like this.

“It destroyed his relationship,” Kyungsoo continues. “His wife blamed him. He has two daughters as well, but I don’t think he sees them much. He just works all the time. I mean, have you ever been called to the ED and he’s not been there?”

“No,” Jongdae whispers. He glances again at Minseok. No wonder the man is drinking alone.

“I’ve been kind of concerned about him lately,”’ Kyungsoo admits. “He tries to hide it, but I think something’s wrong.” He gives Jongdae a rueful smile. “He could probably use a friend even more than I can.”

“Want to ask him to join us?” Jongdae suggests.

Kyungsoo hesitates. “What if he wants to be alone? I don’t want to annoy him.”

Jongdae smiles at this. The radiologist is definitely not a natural at socializing.

“Then he can just say he’d rather drink alone,” he says. “It's no big deal.” He starts to stand up to go and ask Minseok, but the unmistakable sound of a pager beeps out from across the room. The device is resting on the bar beside Minseok’s drink, and the ED chief grabs it to read the message even as he’s already getting up. He leaves without seeing Jongdae and Kyungsoo, and Jongdae sits down again with a shrug.

“See what I mean?” Kyungsoo sighs. “I think he may actually live in the hospital.”

Jongdae knows the radiologist is exaggerating, but he can’t help but think that if he’d lost a child and had the rest of his family torn away by divorce, he wouldn’t want to go home either. The empty house would just be a painful reminder of everything he had lost.

He turns the conversation to more everyday things, but the ED chief stays in the back of his mind. If he gets a chance, he decides, he’ll try to get closer to him. Kyungsoo is right. Kim Minseok is another person who needs a friend.


	5. October 16th

It's not yet the start of Minseok's official work day, but he's already in his office, having never left the hospital the night before. Behind him, a pillow is propped up on the couch, with a tangled blanket strewn across the cushions. He sleeps here when the loneliness of his apartment gets too much and the nightmarish thoughts start to close in on him. It happens more often than he'd ever admit, even to himself.

He’s just woken his computer from its slumber, but he’s not looking at the screen. Instead, he’s staring at a framed picture on his desk of a young boy, smile radiating and eyes gleaming with mischief. He holds an ice cream cone in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. His new clothes suggest the first day of kindergarten.

Next to the picture of the boy is one of two older girls in school uniform, laughing and smiling as they hug each other. The picture of the girls is more recent, taken at their most recent school awards ceremony. He tries to be there for their more special occasions, but he’s never really present in their lives.

Jangmi has told him that he’s a bad father multiple times, but she doesn’t understand. Minseok wants to be there. He wants to cheer Nayoung in her soccer matches, he wants to attend Eunbi’s cello recitals and see how she progresses. But every time he watches sees daughters, he’s reminded of what he's lost. And he’s reminded that it is his fault; it is all his fault everything fell apart. It’s so much easier to just forget it all, push the feelings away and remain distant. It hurts less.

Minseok turns his attention back to the photograph of the boy. Unlike the one of the girls, this photo will never be replaced with a newer one as the child in it grows up. He picks the photograph up to hold it closer, and a lump fights its way up from his chest cavity and lodges in his throat, squeezing so tight it hurts. His sweet boy who’d been so enthusiastic about everything in life. His boy who would max out his library card with picture books about dinosaurs and spaceships. His boy who loved ice cream and teddy bears and whose favourite thing at the local playground was the slide.

The wall clock ticks over to six am. Minseok is officially working. He puts down the picture of the boy, stands up, and grabs his doctor’s coat from the chair, shuts his office door behind him and walks into the emergency department. It’s quiet, but it's six am on a Tuesday morning and this is normal.

“Anything new?” he asks the nurse at the nursing station. She looks up and sends him a cheerful smile.

“Good morning, Chief Kim. Just a few lacerations and broken bones, nothing the residents can’t handle.”

Minseok mumbles a belated good morning back and mentally scolds himself for not starting with a greeting. He doesn’t mean to be rude to his coworkers, but sometimes he’s too eager to get to work and forget his life. Today is one of those days. Instead of sticking around the nursing station, he takes a round of the ED and greets the residents and nurses. The night shift residents look drained, and Minseok can’t help but think back to his own time in residency. He probably looked the same, trying to balance fatherhood and overtime.

The large screen that keeps track of their current patients lets him know that they have a few older teenagers in for lacerations. Minseok guesses it’s a fight of some sort. He lets the residents deal with that. An elderly lady arrives with the ambulance, having been found on the floor when the aid came in the morning. She suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and scolds the paramedics loudly as they wheel her in. Minseok lets the residents have that experience as well. In the break room he gets his first cup of coffee and closes his eyes for a second to focus on the day ahead. The thoughts of his children slowly fade to the back of his mind as he drinks his coffee and observes the place he has put all his energy into for the past eight years.

A 53-year-old man arrives in the ED at a quarter past eight, presenting with a strong headache, confusion and poor coordination. Minseok jumps on the case, following the paramedics as they wheel the patient into the room. A quick conversation with the paramedics reveals that the patient had been seizing shortly before the ambulance arrived. The credit card in his wallet says Park Bonhwa. They can’t get the confused patient to tell them whether that is indeed his name, but with no evidence to the contrary, Minseok assumes it is. A quick neurological examination doesn’t reveal any further symptoms, but there’s plenty of reason to suspect stroke, and he sends Bonhwa to radiology for a CT scan.

While he waits for Bonhwa to come back from radiology, he finds a computer and looks up the patient's journal. He hasn’t had prior symptoms like the ones he shows now, but there’s a lung cancer diagnosis from about a year ago with chemotherapy as the primary treatment. Minseok notes it all in the back of his mind, but when he gets the radiology results, there’s no hemorrhaging and nothing that suggests a thrombus. Stroke is off the list. As he walks the hallways of the ED to get back to Bonhwa, he considers whether it could be metastases from the lung cancer.

“How are you?” he asks as he enters the small room Bonhwa occupies. Bonhwa looks towards him with a droopy smile and tries to answer, but hasn’t gained any more clarity than when he arrived. He doesn’t know what day it is nor where he is. There is definitely something wrong in that brain of his.

“My head hurts,” Bonhwa repeats over and over again. Minseok believes him, but he can't give analgesia yet, or he won’t be able to assess whether or not Bonwha's condition worsens. It’s a dilemma of emergency medicine, but the challenge of diagnosing difficult cases like this was the thing he fell in love with many years ago on his first ED rotation as an intern.

Minseok presses two fingers down Bonhwa’s cervical spine to assess whether or not the symptoms might stem from there, but Bonhwa doesn’t react much. Okay, so not a spine injury. His cancer spreading seems most likely now that he has ruled out stroke.

Another call to radiology and he begs his way to an MRI as quickly as possible, but an hour later when it’s done and the results are clear, he’s not any closer to a diagnosis than he was when Bonhwa first arrived. The MRI is negative, there are no metastases in his brain and stroke is now definitively ruled out. Nurse Seo enters and sends him a curt nod before she turns to the patient. She has always been a little straightforward and severe, but Minseok likes working with her. There’s never any nonsense with her.

He leaves Bonhwa with Nurse Seo and walks back into his office to get a journal he keeps stored. He could call neurology for a consult, but he’d rather not. He likes challenges, and though he has ruled out the two most common causes of Bonhwa’s symptoms, he’s not ready to give up yet. He has only just left his office with the journal in hand when his pager goes off with a code blue, indicating the room he left Bonhwa in. He sprints down the hallways, sliding as he turns corners, and arrives 30 seconds later to see Bonhwa seizing violently.

“Fuck,” he mutters and hurries towards the bed to help Nurse Seo manage the seizure. Another resident comes running but is needed elsewhere a minute later when a traffic accident is announced. For a few moments, Minseok is torn. As the chief of the ED, he wants to go and manage his employees and make sure every patient is seen in a reasonable time, but his heart as an emergency attending can’t leave Bonhwa alone now to make managerial decisions, and besides, he can trust his staff to handle the TA. His head nurse is excellent at assigning staff where they’re needed and the triage nurses are well-practiced at explaining wait times to less urgent patients.

When Bonhwa stops seizing he’s unconscious but his vitals are stable. Minseok makes sure Nurse Seo calls the respiratory technician to manage his respiration. He leaves the room for a moment and stands by the wall. There are staff rushing around him in every direction, but he doesn’t meet their eyes, just stands there and lets his mind run through every possible diagnosis that can cause Bonhwa’s symptoms. Minseok likes to think like this, likes to just observe the chaos as patients and relatives alike rush in and out of his department, getting treated for everything from sore throats and small cuts to life-threatening conditions.

An infection, he thinks. The signs of cerebral dysfunction could indicate encephalitis, an acute inflammation of the brain that could be caused by any one of a multitude of viral or bacterial infections. It’s rare in a man Bonhwa's age, but it’s the only possible explanation to his symptoms now. He turns on his heels and returns to Bonhwa’s room.

“Nurse Seo, call the lab and get me a CRP as fast as possible. I also need a spinal tap.”

She nods and turns back to what she was doing. Minseok turns his attention back to the patient. His chemotherapy must have lowered his immune system enough to make him vulnerable to an infection. It has already been too long since he first arrived. They need to get to the bottom of this, and they need to get there soon.

Nurse Seo hangs up the phone to the lab and turns back to what she was doing. Minseok sees she’s gotten the patient’s wallet and is pulling out the contents and laying them on a table.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Looking for relatives. There are no details in his journal.”

Minseok nods and is about to turn away when something she places aside catches his eye. He turns back and picks up a photograph. It’s taken from above, of two kittens curled up in the lap of the person taking the photograph. The connection that’s been nagging just below the surface of his mind strikes him.

“Toxoplasmosis,” he says, and curses loud enough for Nurse Seo to raise a disapproving eyebrow.

30 minutes later he stands with the results in hand. The encephalitis is caused by _toxoplasma gondii_ , a parasite carried by cats. He has just asked Nurse Seo to put up a combination of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine in his IV line and some folinic acid. That will kill the infection that’s causing his encephalitis and help Bonhwa’s immune system fight the parasite. It doesn’t take long before Bonhwa starts regaining consciousness.

It’s not often Minseok meets a rare case like this and he smiles a little as he leaves the room. There’s nothing that beats the feeling of succeeding in treating a patient with a less common illness without having to consult other specialists. He nods to the nurses he meets on his way back to the large screen that oversees their patients, only to find it’s gone down. Oh well. Just another normal day in the ED.

“Have anything less intense for me?” he asks his head nurse. 

“Less intense?” she questions and looks through her computer screen. “Is anything the matter? You don’t usually take the smaller cases.”

Minseok brushes her question off without even really registering it, the way he always does when anyone asks him something approaching personal. It’s a habit so deeply ingrained he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it anymore.

“Everything’s fine.”

\---

12 straight hours of having to be constantly available at a moment's notice is both inconvenient and, if it’s a busy shift with a lot of calls, can be very draining, but Yixing never minds his on-call shifts, because they give him an extra chance to see Songmi. Though they work in the same hospital, Yixing is usually on the oncology floor while his wife is in the emergency department, so their paths don’t cross unless Yixing is on call or they manage to make their breaks coincide. Despite this, Yixing knows that he and Songmi are famous in the hospital for being the “work couple”, and when they’re seen together, they often get fond smiles or knowing looks from colleagues who have followed their hospital romance. Luckily, neither Yixing or Songmi mind being the subject of gossip. If one of the first stories new interns are told is how they fell in love at first sight on Yixing’s first day as a first-year oncology resident freshly-arrived from China, his eyes meeting those of the pretty ED nurse over the feverish body of a neutropenic patient, and how they got married two years later, and now, nearly a decade on, are still just as in love as they were on day 1 - well, it’s all true, so what’s the problem?

So when Yixing is hauled from the depths of a research study by the obnoxious beeping of his pager, instead of the irritated sigh one might hear from another on-call doctor, a little smile tugs at his lips. Songmi is on shift today, and though they’re unlikely to have time to do more than exchange smiles, that’s still enough to make Yixing’s day ten times brighter.

His pager says STAT, which indicates an immediate assessment is needed. There’s a whole list of conditions an oncologist might have to handle in the ED, but a STAT call, as opposed to simply an urgent call, narrows down the list somewhat. He jogs down the hall and manages to catch an elevator by sticking his foot between the closing doors. They bounce off his polished shoe and slide open again, and he nods apologetically at the startled visitors inside. As the elevator descends to the ground floor, he runs through the possibilities in his head. He’s probably looking at a neutropenic fever or a hemorrhage that the patient’s cancer is making complex to control with surgical intervention. While neither of these things is good, he’d prefer the neutropenia. Uncontrolled bleeds are both messy and very difficult to solve in an immunosuppressed cancer patient.

He arrives in the ED and finds it nearly as busy as he’s ever seen it. There are doctors, nurses, radiology technicians, orderlies, patients and family members everywhere, there are several ambulances with their lights flashing outside at the ambulance bay, and it’s extremely loud. A glance towards the trauma bay tells him there’s probably just been a traffic accident with multiple victims, putting extra pressure on the ED, who aren’t staffed to handle as many patients in the typically quieter mornings. That’s not his concern though. He looks around to find someone who’ll tell him where his patient is, but the only person who’s not rushing around like the entire world depends on where they’re going is another doctor who’s just walked in behind him and is looking rather how Yixing feels - stunned.

“What’s going on?” Dr. Byun asks him. Yixing’s met the always-friendly plastic surgeon a few times here and there, and Songmi knows him quite well through ED work. She’s told him Dr. Byun is the best in the hospital at closing complex lacerations without leaving nasty scars, and he has a knack of being able to soothe even the most cranky, upset, or terrified patients with his sunny bedside manner, so she’s always happy when he’s on call.

Yixing nods towards the trauma bay. “I just got here, but it looks like a TA,” he says distractedly. There may be a TA, but someone still has to direct him to his emergency oncology patient. There’s nobody at the nursing station, and the main screen on the wall seems to have gone down, showing a blue error message. Of course it would go down at the worst possible moment. He catches the arm of a passing nurse carrying a tray of plastic-wrapped medical tubing.

“Sorry, doctors,” she apologises to them both in a harried sort of way as she sets down her tray and leans over the desk to spin a screen around, rather than taking the time to go around the desk. “As you can see, it’s a mess in here right now.” She quickly brings up the information they need. “Dr. Zhang, you’re in room 8, suspected neutropenia. Dr. Byun, they want you in room 17B for a complex eyelid laceration.”

Yixing and Baekhyun disappear in their respective directions. Yixing has already given up on the idea of seeing Songmi. Unless he’s lucky enough to have his wife assigned to the same patient, she’ll have her hands full dealing with this crisis. He enters room 8 and his heart sinks. The young girl lying on the bed, already on IV fluids the emergency staff have put in, one hand held by her mother and the other arm having blood drawn for culture by an older male nurse Yixing hasn’t met before, is his favourite patient, Park Sooyoung.

“Dr. Zhang,” Sooyoung’s mother, Jiae, jumps up when she sees him, but doesn’t let go of her daughter’s hand. “She got a fever this morning and it just got worse so quickly...”

“What time did she show symptoms?” Yixing hurries over to the bed, quickly introduces himself to the nurse, and checks the monitors the ED staff have already attached. Sooyoung is shocky, her heart rate at 108, blood pressure low. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is shallow and fast.

“I noticed she was more lethargic than usual at around 10:30, and her temperature was 38.6 degrees,” Jiae tells him. Yixing frowns. It’s not even midday yet, so that’s an alarmingly rapid fever progression.

“I want an urgent CBC and diff, Na, K and creatinine,” he starts listing the blood tests to the ED nurse drawing blood, but he doesn’t need to wait for the results to know that Sooyoung is in the grip of a neutropenic fever and that he needs to start treating it right away.

“She’s got an infection,” he tells Jiae. “I’m going to start IV antibiotics for the infection and a second fluid line to help combat the septic shock.”

Sooyoung’s mother pales. She knows how dangerous an infection is to her daughter. With her immune system suppressed by the chemotherapy treatment, Sooyoung has nothing to fight the infection with.

“Is - is she -” she stumbles over the words, but Yixing knows what she’s trying to ask.

“It’s not a good situation,” he says as gently as he can. As he speaks he’s hanging the IV antibiotics a pharmacy assistant has just brought him. “You did the right thing to bring her here immediately, and I’ll do the best I can. If she responds to emergency treatment, I’m going to get her admitted to the intensive care unit.”

Jiae’s eyes fill with tears.

“Please save her, Dr. Zhang,” she lets go of Sooyoung’s hand to clutch at his sleeve. “Please. Please save my daughter.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promises again. He rapidly examines Sooyoung, watching the monitors for any signs that her shock is worsening. Her heart rate is still too fast and her blood pressure is too low, and he thinks the second IV line might not be enough.

“Let’s get a central line in,” he tells the nurse. Usually he’d have at least two nurses helping him here, but he knows without being told that the ED is stretched to capacity right now. He’s lucky to have any nurse at all. Inserting a central line is a specialist nursing task and while Yixing knows how to do it, the ED nurses are far more practiced at the job, so he lets Nurse Han take the lead. They cut Sooyoung’s t-shirt off, sterilise the skin around the large vein in her chest they’ll be inserting the catheter into, and cover her exposed torso with a surgical drape. Jiae watches, pale and silent.

Nurse Han guides the central line in without any difficulty, and Yixing calls radiology. They’ll need an X-ray to make sure the line is properly placed before they can use it. He knows radiology will be stretched by the traffic accident, but he asks the radiologist to prioritize Sooyoung, because he needs to get fluids into her as fast as possible, and he can use it to get the antibiotics in faster as well. It takes a little arguing to get her to the head of the list over the trauma patients, but he doesn’t back down, and eventually the radiologist agrees to prioritize her.

As he and the nurse push her wheeled gurney into the elevator to go to radiology, Sooyoung mumbles something. Yixing glances down to see that she’s opened her eyes and is gazing up at him, slightly unfocused.

“Where…” she mumbles.

“Hi, Sooyoung,” he smiles down at her. “You’re in hospital. You got a fever, so me and Nurse Han here are going to help you feel better.”

“Dr. Zhang,” her voice is only a whisper, but she manages a faint smile back at him. “I know...you’ll help me.”

“You’re going to get an X-ray now,” he explains, fighting to keep his voice cheerful. “We’ve given you a bigger IV called a central line so we can get you enough fluids, and we need to make sure it’s in the right place before we start using it.”

“Okay,” she says faintly, her eyes closing again. Yixing checks the portable EKG. Her heart rate is still 108, which is too fast, but at least it’s steady and not climbing. If he gets more fluids into her fast, and the antibiotics do their job, she might get through this crisis yet.

The X-ray is taken, the radiologist clears the central line as properly inserted and safe for use, and once the higher volume of fluids are going into Sooyoung, her septic shock starts to improve, to Yixing’s great relief. She’s still in danger from the infection, though, and he gets her admitted to the ICU. The staff there will monitor her and call him if she deteriorates any further, but now that she’s on her antibiotic course, there’s nothing more Yixing can do apart from let the ICU staff do their jobs and pray Sooyoung pulls through this.

By the time he’s leaving the ED, the TA victims have been triaged and the department feels less crazy. It’s still noisy and slightly chaotic, but that’s normal for this department. He’s just stepping out through the automatic doors when he hears his name called. He turns around to see Dr. Byun waving to him, and waits as the plastic surgeon catches up. The smaller doctor smiles brightly up at him, practically glowing.

“Have fun?” Yixing asks. He’s never seen a doctor in the ED look quite so happy. Dr. Byun must really enjoy closing eyelid lacerations.

Dr. Byun nods, beaming. “I was working with your wife," he says. "She asked me to tell you she’d be out in a few minutes, if you have time to stick around for lunch.”

Relief washes through Yixing. This is what he needs. Company, love, friendship. Something to distract him from his heartache. “You want to join us?” he asks Dr. Byun. Talking to someone so obviously happy is bound to help, and he’s glad when the plastic surgeon readily agrees.

They manage to snag a table in the busy open cafeteria, and Yixing orders for Songmi as well as himself. Dr. Byun starts chattering about some news story, and though Yixing hasn’t seen the story he nods along, grateful for the distraction. Before long Songmi arrives, along with their food, and Yixing's heart lifts a little when she gives him a quick hug of greeting before sitting down and smiling at Dr. Byun.

“That was classy work on the eyelid,” she says. “Your reputation is well-deserved.”

Dr. Byun laughs. “My colleague told me recently that I missed my calling as a fashion designer,” he says. “Delicate needlework is my strong point.”

“How is Nari?” Songmi asks. Yixing doesn’t know who this is, but it becomes apparent when Dr. Byun lights up even more and tells them that he’s decided to propose to her.

Songmi gasps and claps her hands. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations!”

Yixing echoes her words. He can’t help smiling to see how happy Dr. Byun looks. It reminds him of when he and Songmi had gotten engaged, and a little more sadness slips away.

“Actually, I was wondering if you two would mind helping me out.” Dr. Byun glances between them hopefully. “You’re famous around here for being the perfect couple. Come on, you know it’s true,” he laughs when Songmi blushes and swats his arm.

Yixing smiles. Being famous for being a perfect couple sounds pretty good to him. “What do you want help with?” he asks.

“I’ve been to about ten jewellery shops this month,” Dr. Byun admits with an embarrassed smile. “But I just cannot seem to decide on a ring. I want it to be perfect, but I think I’m too attached to be able to make a decision.”

Songmi laughs. “Why am I not surprised,” she teases. “Your head is in the clouds when it comes to that girl. You want us to help you pick a ring, is that it?”

Dr. Byun nods fervently. “Would you mind? I know it means giving up your free time -”

“Of course not! It’ll be fun,” Songmi exclaims. “We’ll find something absolutely perfect for Nari.”

“You picked the right person for this mission,” Yixing tells Dr. Byun. “Jewellery shopping is Songmi’s favourite thing.”

He doesn’t mind giving up his free time either. He doesn’t mind doing anything so long as it’s with Songmi, and he knows she’ll have fun picking an engagement ring for Dr. Byun’s girlfriend. If Songmi is happy, he is happy, and if that means traipsing around jewellery shops and pretending that he can see the difference between hundreds of rings that to him all fall under the same, simple category of “sparkly”, that's fine with Yixing.

\---

The auditorium is dark, the small stage lit by strong lights. The red curtains hang heavy on either side of the stage and in the middle a black grand piano gleames under the lights. To the left of the piano sit four eight-year-olds - two violinists, a violist and a cellist making up a typical chamber group. They're a little out of tune at times and the piece isn’t particularly difficult, but they’ve only been playing for two years and they’re showing off what they’ve learned.

The girl playing the cello is tall for her age and skinny, with shoulder-length black hair and strong, slim facial features. She looks exactly like her mother, Minseok thinks as he observes her. She looks beautiful.

Before he can stop himself, Ilsung flashes into his mind. He can’t help but see his son in the young violinist sitting opposite Eunbi. He looks at the little boy’s intensely focused face, sees the way his body sways slightly with the flow of the music. Ilsung, like Eunbi, had liked the classical records Minseok used to play for them. He probably would have loved to learn an instrument. Minseok doesn’t feel the tear leave his eye, but he feels it track down his cheek, followed rapidly by another, and he presses his hands hard into his face and fights them away.

The concert ends with a few of the older students playing more advanced pieces, but Minseok doesn’t pay much attention to them. They’re good, no doubt, but he was here for Eunbi. He slowly makes his way towards his wife and younger daughter, noisy conversation all around him as students find their parents in the large auditorium. Eunbi notices him first and her eyes go big.

“Dad?” she asks. She sounds uncertain, as if she can’t quite believe it’s really him, and his heart splinters a little. This is not what he wanted. Jangmi turns around to look in Eunbi’s direction and gets eye contact with Minseok. Minseok shrinks a little under his ex-wife’s harsh stare.

“Hey, princess." Minseok is now close enough to reach out towards Eunbi, opening his arms for a hug, but she hesitates. It's just for a moment, but it's long enough to cause a cascade of doubts to pour through him as she steps into his arms. He shouldn’t have come unannounced. This was a bad decision. Maybe he really is as bad a father as Jangmi tells him. He fights back a surge of misery and manages to smile down at his daughter. Everything is just so difficult.

“You played beautifully,” he tells her. Eunbi smiles shyly, her eyes lighting up a little. “I can’t wait to hear you play Spring by Vivaldi.”

“I just started learning that, dad! If you want to hear it, you could drive me to practice next week? I’m sure my teacher wouldn’t mind!”

Her enthusiasm is adorable, and Minseok’s heart swells a little. Maybe it isn’t too late. He can feel Jangmi watching him, her disapproval written in the tautness of her body. He has a lot of work next week like always, his schedule filled with extra shifts to avoid the emptiness of his apartment and the torment of having enough time to think, but he can make time for Eunbi.

“I would love to. Text me what time it is and I’ll come and pick you up.” Minseok smiles at Eunbi and she squeals and embraces him, this time without any awkwardness.

“Go pack up your cello, Eunbi,” Jangmi says, and when Eunbi is out of earshot she turns to Minseok.

“If you let her down, I will kill you,” she says fiercely. Minseok takes a calming breath. He tries to be civil with Jangmi, he really does, but the level of hatred she harbours for him makes it extremely difficult to communicate. She’ll never forgive him, and he doesn’t blame her, because he’ll never forgive himself either. He doesn’t even really want her forgiveness. He certainly doesn’t deserve it, but he wishes she would make it easier to have a normal conversation.

“I won’t let her down,” he says.

“I’ve heard that one before.” Jangmi narrows her eyes and stares at him coldly. “I’m thinking of suing you for custody of the children.”

Minseok feels like he’s just run full-tilt into a brick wall. He stares at her, stunned into silence. He can’t lose the girls. They’re all he has left. Cold fear seems to lock around his chest and tighten his throat.

“You - you can’t do that,” he stammers.

“Of course I can. You saw her hesitate, Minseok. You’re only there for the girls when it fits your schedule. You show up when it’s convenient and expect them to fall head over heels for you, but you’re never there when they really need their father. You have to step up to your responsibilities or get out of their lives completely so they can get over you. All you’re doing is getting their hopes up only to crush them over and over.”

“That’s not fair,” he says. Anger rises up in him, and it’s less painful than the fear, so he lets it burn in his voice.

“Neither is their father being a workaholic that puts work over them.” Jangmi scowls and looks away, and Minseok tries to get a hold of his emotions. Getting angry with her here isn’t going to help anything. After a moment she looks back at him and speaks more quietly. “I want you to go see a therapist. I’ve tried to be understanding, Minseok. I've made allowances, given you time to pull yourself together, but it’s been years and it’s not getting any better. You need to address your issues and be a real father for the girls. If you don’t, I will sue for custody. And if you cancel on Eunbi, I will hunt you down and hurt you.”

Minseok is speechless. He has to say something, somehow explain himself, make her understand, but he hasn’t found the right words before Eunbi comes running up with her cello case on her back. He doesn't really understand why he acts this way himself. No wonder he can’t explain it to Jangmi.

He forces a smile onto his lips and kisses Eunbi’s cheek when she leans in to give him a last hug. He’s left staring at their retreating backs after promising he will be there for her next practice once again.

He can do better. He has to do better. He can’t lose them. Losing Ilsung will never stop hurting, but he won’t survive losing Nayoung and Eunbi too. Jangmi’s words seem to ring in his ears. See a therapist? Something in him rebels at the idea. He doesn’t need a therapist, he thinks angrily, and then, as his anger fades and the fear creeps back up on him, realises that the truth is that he's not sure he can handle seeing a therapist. That realisation strikes him a little more deeply than he’d expected.

He stands blankly in the slowly emptying auditorium, departing proud parents and excited children milling around him, his thoughts in freefall, until he blinks back into the present and finds that he’s somehow the last person there, and a staff member has come up to politely ask him to leave so they can close the doors.

\---

Baekhyun feels like he’s walking on clouds. The autumn day is bright and crisp, the leaves on the trees in the park across the street have turned red-gold, and the air seems to sparkle. Everything looks bright, and brightest of all is Baekhyun’s future. He sees himself and Nari hand-in-hand, like Yixing and Songmi walking beside him, bound together forever. He imagines a sparkling ring on her slender finger. He sees her stunningly beautiful in a white wedding dress with star-like jewels in her dark hair. Perhaps they’ll have children, he thinks dreamily. A little girl who takes after Nari...

“Baekhyun,” Songmi calls him back from his dreams, a laugh in her voice. “Wake up. We’re here.”

“Oh, right,” Baekhyun grins sheepishly, turning back to where Yixing and Songmi have stopped outside the glass-fronted window of a jewellery shop. They’d met up for lunch before their shopping trip and shifted to casual speech and first-name terms. Now, both of them are watching him with amusement.

“Pleasant thoughts?” Yixing teases, and he finds himself blushing. He’s not about to admit he was imagining the children he’ll have one day.

“Let’s go in,” he says hurriedly and pushes the door open. He hasn’t visited this particular shop in his many attempts to buy a ring, as it’s in a more distant suburb. Songmi says it’s family-owned and has unique designs, which is promising. Nari likes things that are unique, so some mass-produced thing isn’t going to satisfy her. He needs something that is 100% Nari.

Songmi leads him over to a glass cabinet. Yixing follows them, but after a couple of minutes his eyes start glazing over, and Baekhyun almost forgets the quiet oncologist is there as he and Songmi discuss the pros and cons of different designs, aided in their task by a shop assistant who brings out some of the rings for them to look at more closely. Baekhyun focuses carefully on each one, only to eventually shake his head. They’re all nice, but none of them are quite right.

“This is lovely.” Songmi is inspecting a design on an asymmetrical band with a cluster of smaller diamonds set around a central one.

Baekhyun looks at it. “It’s pretty, but is it special enough?” he wonders. “It’s got to be really special. Like, extra-extra special.”

Songmi laughs. “You are so head-over-heels. Nari is a lucky girl.”

“Didn’t you say she likes lilies?” They both turn at the sound of Yixing’s voice. The last time Baekhyun had noticed the tall oncologist he’d been standing in the centre of the room gazing blankly into space, but now he’s migrated over to a smaller display recessed into the wall, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trenchcoat as he gazes into the display.

“They’re her favourite flower,” Baekhyun says. “Why?”

Yixing nods towards the display, and they both go over to look, followed by the assistant. Baekhyun sees a graceful white-gold band that wreathes up into the curled-back petals of a lily. The center of the flower holds a diamond that seems to sparkle with hints of blue and pink deep within.

“Oh, my. It’s beautiful,” Songmi breathes. The shop assistant steps up to unlock the case, and a smile spreads over Baekhyun’s face as he looks closer. This is right. This is Nari’s ring. He knows it as surely as he knows Nari.

“One of our unique designs,” the assistant says. “A 16-karat diamond in white-gold, set into a calla lily. Very elegant. You have a good eye, sir,” she tells Yixing, who looks a little taken aback at this comment.

“That’s the one,” Baekhyun says. He grins at the assistant. “I’ll take it.”

Songmi squeals and applauds, and Baekhyun finds himself almost exploding with happiness. He grabs Songmi in a hug, then grabs Yixing for the same. He doesn’t even care about the startled yelp he elicits from the oncologist at the unexpected contact. He just has to share his joy somehow. It’s going to burst out of his skin otherwise.

“Good job, husband,” he hears Songmi tell Yixing as he bounces along behind the assistant to the counter. “I knew I dragged you along for a reason.”

Baekhyun can’t wait for the day when Nari will call him “husband”.

Songmi had told him to bring one of Nari’s other rings with him so they can size it, and fortunately the sizes match, so he can take it away today. The ring is rather more than he’d originally intended on paying, but Baekhyun doesn’t even blink as he drains his account of three month’s salary. What’s the point in earning a plastic surgeon’s wage if he doesn’t spend it on the things that matter?

He’s decided on how he’s going to propose, and now that he has the ring, everything is ready. As he walks the five miles home instead of taking the subway - he needs to discharge some energy or he’ll end up annoying Nari with his hyperactivity this evening - he feels like he wouldn’t be surprised if a choir of angels appeared in the clear blue sky above him and started regaling him with their harps and violins.

He’s going to marry the most perfect girl in the world, and Baekhyun couldn’t be happier.


	6. October 31st

Sehun stands in front of a glass shop window, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his black woolen coat, nose and mouth buried in a soft, orange plaid scarf. It’s the last day of October, and the air temperature seems to have finally realised what season it is and decided to take a sudden plunge of a good fifteen degrees overnight. The air is cold and crystalline, and he’s grateful that Mikyung messaged him this morning and made him promise to wear the new scarf she mailed him a couple of weeks ago. The 10-minute walk from home to work would have been a heck of a lot colder if she hadn’t reminded him. He rarely remembers to check the weather forecast before leaving his apartment. A smile softens his eyes. Mikyung is busy travelling all around the southern region of Busan, finding stories to report on, but somehow she always finds the time to check the weather in Seoul and warn him if it’s going to be particularly hot, cold, or rainy. For what must be the thousandth time, he wonders what he ever did to deserve her, and the usual ache of missing her tugs at his chest. It’s close to four months now they’ve been living in different cities, and it hasn’t gotten any better. If anything, it’s worse.

The iciness in the air is stinging his ears. He burrows his chin deeper into his scarf and continues on his way. The display that had caught his eye was a Halloween-themed one, with carved pumpkins, spider-filled cobwebs and a multitude of bats. He’s aware that it’s Halloween today, thanks to that crazy paediatrician, Park Chanyeol, who had staggered into dermatology two days ago with his arms stacked so high with decorations he couldn’t see over them, fake cobwebs trailing behind him like a bridal veil. He’d dumped the lot on the dermatology reception desk, to the chagrin of the receptionist, and roped Sehun into helping him decorate the dermatology floor. Chanyeol must have given up an entire day off to make every department ready for the Halloween event he’s staging for the ward kids.

Trick-or-treating ward kids are fine, but Sehun has something more in mind. It’s only with the greatest difficulty that he has managed to stop himself mailing an envelope to Mikyung containing a toy spider that he picked up at a market stall a couple of weeks ago - it wouldn’t be the same without being there to see her reaction, he consoles himself - and his pranking instinct is feeling very thwarted by his own rare show of self-discipline. He needs to play a trick on someone or he’s going to end up doing something to Mikyung that he’ll definitely regret. She always punishes him by refusing to speak to him for whatever she deems is a length of time proportionate to his crime, and it’s the one punishment that can really make him regret his many misdeeds. He needs to talk to her every day, and she knows it.

Arriving at the hospital, Sehun makes his way through the entrance lobby and joins a small group of nurses waiting for the staff elevator. His ears start to sting as the warm air inside starts to warm them up. There’s a certain prank he’s been wanting to play for ages, and it’s Halloween today, so it’s the perfect excuse. All he needs is a partner in crime; someone who isn’t too serious and grown-up and weighed down with the troubles of work and life, like way too many doctors seem to be. Also someone who isn’t so exhausted by the demands of their specialty that they’re not willing to give up some free time to stay at work late for a bit of fun.

Sehun’s specialty is one of the least demanding when it comes to pulling long hours, because emergency dermatology cases are rare. He thinks about the other departments that are known for being easier on their practitioners, at least in comparison to things like emergency medicine or cardiology, and comes up with psychiatry and plastic surgery. He doesn’t know any psychiatrists personally, but he does know a plastic surgeon, and when Dr. Byun pops into his mind, Sehun hides his grin in his scarf. If there was ever a perfect partner-in-crime, it has to be Byun Baekhyun.

He has time before his first patient, so he rides the elevator up to the plastic surgery floor near the top of the hospital and checks Baekhyun's schedule with the plastic surgery receptionist. Baekhyun’s last surgery should be finished by three, so Sehun leaves a message with the receptionist asking Baekhyun to come down to his office when he’s done.

The day’s patients are over and he’s going through some notes when there’s a tap on the frame of his open office door. He looks up and grins in welcome at Baekhyun.

“What’s up?” Baekhyun asks with a brilliant smile. He crosses the room in a rapid gait that’s more like bouncing than walking and grabs the first thing he sees on Sehun’s desk - which happens to be the plastic pumpkin-shaped container filled with Halloween-themed candy. He fishes a couple of candies out and sticks them in his mouth, mumbling his words as he talks through them. “I see Chanyeol has descended upon dermatology too?”

“Yeah,” Sehun agrees, eyeing Baekhyun’s happily chewing face with trepidation. “Um, how much candy have you had today?”

“I’ve lost count!” Baekhyun says blithely. He holds out his hands flat in the air over Sehun’s desk. “Look. Sugar rush.”

Sehun looks. Baekhyun’s hands are actually trembling slightly.

“I pity whichever patient you were operating on today,” he says.

“Don’t worry, I waited till afterwards to get started,” Baekhyun tells him. “I have to make up for lost time. My girlfriend only lets me eat candy twice a year, on Easter and Halloween. I have to make the most of it.”

Sehun laughs. “Why only twice a year?”

“Apparently it makes me too hyperactive to handle on a daily basis,” Baekhyun says with a grin that’s just slightly too wide, and Sehun can’t help but think that Baekhyun’s girlfriend has a point.

He takes Baekhyun’s hands while they’re still in front of him and turns them over, inspecting the pale skin at the base of his wrists. This is how they’d first met. Baekhyun has chronic eczema, and he comes to Sehun when he gets flare-ups.

“Looking pretty clear,” he says. There are only a couple of small scaly patches on the left wrist, and the right is nearly perfect. His fingers are clear, too. “How are your arms?”

Baekhyun rolls the sleeves of his doctor’s coat up to show Sehun that the skin of his forearms and the inside of his elbows is as smooth and pale as most of his wrists. “Really good. I can’t remember it ever being this clear,” he says. “Scrubbing in is almost pain-free these days. But you didn’t call me over to check my skin, did you?”

Sehun grins. “How would you like to break your Halloween tradition of getting high on sugar and be my partner-in-crime instead?”

Baekhyun looks intrigued. “I always thought I’d make an excellent sidekick,” he says. “What do you have in mind?”

“I want to play a truly epic prank.”

\---

Joonmyun watches the ultrasound monitor nervously. He’s brought his wife with him to the hospital this morning for her seventh-month pregnancy checkup. As usual, Yejin is calm as a tranquil ocean while the obstetrician moves the gel-covered probe over her rounded belly, while Joonymyun feels like he’s sitting on pins. How Yejin isn’t anxious is beyond him. To look at her, you’d never think this was her first pregnancy. She takes everything in her stride with the same quiet confidence that she brings to everything, while Joonmyun jitters.

He catches his breath as the ultrasound picks up a tiny curled-up hand, the side of his child’s head, the shell-like curve of his ear.

“Your son looks perfect,” Jongdae tells them with a smile, and Joonmyun lets out a sigh of relief. There’s been no reason to think otherwise, but Joonmyun has operated on far too many extremely sick babies to take anything for granted. He knows far too well just how many things can go wrong. Only two days ago he’d done heart surgery on a newborn with an atrial septal defect, and Joonmyun can’t help but worry that his own child might end up on an operating table.

“See? I told you everything would be fine.” Yejin squeezes his hand from where she’s lying on the exam bed and smiles at him. Joonmyun smiles back. Maybe it’s weird that his wife is the one comforting him over her own pregnancy, but that’s just the way they are. Joonmyun may be a surgeon, able to remain calm and collected in situations unimaginable to most people, but when it comes to his dear ones, nothing he can tell himself can quell his anxiety.

“Yejin is right,” Jongdae adds reassuringly. “The baby is healthy, and Yejin is fine too. There’s no reason to expect any complications.”

They hadn’t known each other before Yejin’s pregnancy, but over the past seven months Joonmyun has found a new friend in the obstetrician. Jongdae is so caring with all his patients, giving each one of them his undivided attention, remembering their names, the names of their partners, families, existing children, jobs or hobbies without even checking his notes, and he brings that caring nature into his friendships too. “Have you decided on a name yet? You were thinking Chinhwa or Yejoon, right?”

Joonmyun smiles. It’s another sign of how much Jongdae cares for his patients, remembering the potential names of their son from the last appointment a month ago.

“I’m leaning towards Yejoon,” Yejin says. “My parents are pushing for Chinhwa because of the auspicious meaning, but I like the combination of our names in Yejoon.”

“It’s a good, strong name,” Jongdae agrees. “What about you, Joonmyun?”

Joonmyun honestly doesn’t mind. As long as he’s born healthy, and Yejin is healthy too, she can call him whatever she likes, but he knows it’s better to be seen as having an opinion. He starts to say that he likes the name Yejoon too, but is interrupted when his pager goes off. He glances at it and his heart sinks.

“Is it an emergency?” Yejin asks.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I really wanted to stay, but -” he’s already getting up as he speaks. It’s a STAT call to the ED and he needs to run.

“Don’t worry. You know I understand.” Yejin smiles up at him, and he plants a quick kiss on her head and nods at Jongdae before heading quickly for the door.

When he gets to the emergency department a couple of minutes later, he finds it in an unusual state. Most of the time, the hospital runs like clockwork, every doctor, nurse, orderly or technician performing their specific set of tasks relating to their own patients, regardless of what’s going on elsewhere. Today, though, what looks like at least half the ED team have ground to a standstill, staring at the patient that’s just been wheeled in. It’s like there’s been a momentary time freeze.

Joonmyun walks past staring staff members until he comes into view of what they’re all looking at. When his eyes land on the patient, he finds himself, too, coming to a shocked halt. For a second he can’t quite believe what he's seeing, and his thoughts seem to echo with the murmurs of the gathering ED staff.

The patient is lying very still, eyes open and gazing at the ceiling. His respiration is slow and shallow, and there are multiple abrasions and lacerations on his face and on the muscular forearms exposed by a construction worker’s shirt rolled up to the elbows. None of that is what's drawn the shocked attention of every free nurse, tech, orderly and resident in the department. Like Joonmyun, they're all fixated on the 2-metre metal rebar penetrating the man’s chest. There’s a clear metre of rebar rising out of the front of his chest and another metre exiting out his back. How this man is even alive beats Joonmyun, but not only is he conscious, he sees from a glance at the monitor that his vital signs are currently stable.

He shakes off his temporary shock and steps forward. The emergency department chief sees him and begins to relay the information he’ll have gotten from the paramedics. Joonmyun isn’t surprised that Minseok is taking charge of this case. In his ten years of cardiothoracic experience, he’s never seen anything like this, and he doubts anyone else in the room has either. Minseok certainly won’t be entrusting this one to a resident.

He starts a brief examination while Minseok explains the history. 32-year-old Yoon Sungyong fell approximately six metres at a demolition site and landed on a pile of scrap metal, the rebar penetrating his chest on impact. The paramedics have applied a bulky bandage to his chest in an attempt to stop the rebar from moving and causing more damage, and two interns are kneeling beside the gurney and holding the back end of the rebar steady. Joonmyun knows why they’re doing this. The rebar is heavy enough that if it’s allowed to hang without support, gravity will cause it to fall right through the patient and out of his back. The presence of the rebar in Sungyong’s chest is currently blocking most of the damaged blood vessels, but if it falls out, he’ll bleed out within minutes.

Joonmyun’s first thought is that the bar must have miraculously missed the heart and lungs, slipping through a gap between the vital organs and not damaging anything crucial. From the position alone, it looks like it’s gone right through the heart, but Joonmyun can’t see how the heart can still be beating the way the EKG says it is if that’s true. He crouches down beside the interns and touches the rebar lightly. Even with them stabilizing it, he can feel a faint pulsatile sensation through his fingertips. He shakes his head in disbelief. Being able to feel the pulse through the rebar tells him that it has at least penetrated the mediastinum, probably the heart too, and the heart has, incredibly, decided to keep beating anyway.

Minseok has already ordered an emergency CT scan and an operating room for Joonmyun. While the patient is carefully transported to radiology, Joonmyun briefs his rapidly assembling surgical team on what’s to come. Everyone is tense and quiet, and the patient arrives a few minutes later. He’s intubated and prepared for surgery while Joonmyun, Minseok, and the radiologist, Do Kyungsoo, study the CT scan.

“The rebar has penetrated the left lung, see the left hemothorax and contused left lung,” Kyungsoo says, pointing at the relevant parts of the imaging. “As for the heart, this radiolucent shadow here shows it within the right ventricle, just adjacent to the interventricular septum, transfixing the heart. There’s also a small contusion at the diaphragmatic surface of the right liver lobe.”

“Unbelievable,” Minseok murmurs. Joonmyun’s feelings exactly, but the contrast CT isn’t lying. He gets the imaging directed onto one of the screens in the OR and lets out a long, slow breath.

“CPB?” Minseok asks, and Joonmyun nods. A cardiopulmonary bypass - purposefully stopping the heart and lungs and letting a machine take over their function while he gets this thing out of Sungyong - is the only way he has even a remote chance of survival.

“Staked through the heart.” The mutter comes from Kyungsoo. “Hope he’s not a vampire.” Joonmyun sees a flash of a smile cross Minseok’s face at the dark humor. He’d normally crack a grin himself, but he’s too focused on the long and complex surgery he has ahead of him.

He’s aware that he has an audience as he performs the CPB. The operating theatre has an observation room on an upper level, a long window above Joonmyun’s head giving onlookers a good view of the working surgeons and the surgery screens. He doesn’t think much about it. Doubtless the senior surgeons and hospital directors are interested in this extremely rare case, and how he, as one of the youngest attending surgeons on the hospital staff, will handle it, but Joonmyun only has thoughts for what he’s doing. The CPB is a standard procedure, one he performs regularly when he’s doing heart surgery. The chest impalement, though, is a whole other story. He's trained for it in theory, but actually doing it is a once in a lifetime event.

When the CPB machine is set up and doing its job, Joonmyun and the senior resident assisting him open the chest and drain nearly a liter of blood that has collected in the left pleural cavity surrounding the damaged lung. Now he can see exactly where the rebar has gone. Through the pleura, between the upper and lower lobes of the lung and into the side of the pericardium, through the anterior wall of the right ventricle of the heart, then exiting through the other side. Across the table, his senior resident’s eyes are wide behind their binocular loupes.

“Come and have a closer look,” Joonmyun tells the two interns on their internal medicine rotation who are standing against the wall. At this stage in the procedure, the patient is as stable as he’s likely to be, and there’s time for the junior doctors to get a good look at something they’re unlikely to see again in their careers.

It’s time for the most dangerous part of Joonmyun’s task. A couple of nurses brace the patient’s chest and torso, and Joonmyun and his senior resident carefully pull the bar upwards on the same diagonal angle it went in. Hand over hand the bar comes out, and once it’s removed and safely handed off to waiting assistants, Joonmyun and his resident thoroughly wash the ventricular cavity and begin the long process of finding and repairing the multitude of injuries the rebar has made. As time passes by, his audience slowly decreases, the excitement of seeing the rebar removed replaced by long hours of careful, careful probing, patching and suturing. Every so often a theatre assistant dabs the beads of sweat away from Joonmyun’s forehead with a towel. He barely notices her do it. He’s locked in, intently focused of finding every damaged area and putting it all back together. Impalement injuries to the chest are almost always fatal, but the key word here is “almost”. If there’s any chance at all for Yoon Sungyong to survive, Joonmyun will give it his all.

Eleven hours later, coming up to 9 pm, Joonmyun is finally certain that he’s repaired everything there is to repair. He straightens up.

“We’re done,” he says, and smiles despite his suddenly aching head.

Across the table, the senior resident beams at him from behind her mask, and the theatre staff give quiet cheers and congratulate him and each other. Joonmyun rolls his stiff shoulders and looks across the table at his resident. Despite her smile, she looks as exhausted as Joonmyun feels.

“You go ahead,” he tells her. “I’ll close up.”

“But, Dr. Kim...” she starts to protest. It’s ususally the assistant surgeon's job to complete the task of closing the outer layers of the chest after the internal surgery is done, but Joonmyun shakes his head and tells her again to go ahead. This has been her longest surgery by far, and being an emergency, they had no time to prepare for it. Joonmyun is more experienced, and he knows his limits. He still has a little more left in him.

He glances up at the observation window and is surprised to see that there’s still someone there. Minseok sends him a wide smile and a double thumbs-up, and despite his exhaustion, Joonmyun can’t help but smile back.

\---

The children’s ward is decorated with bats in the windows, cobwebs in every corner and carved pumpkins along the hallways. Small ghost figurines feature prominently on every flat surface and the large reception desk area holds a big bowl of wrapped candy for every little outpatient visitor. Chanyeol has big plans for today. He has roped in a few nurses, and together they’ve been searching far and wide the last couple of weeks for costumes in all sizes and shapes. They are going to host a Halloween party for the admitted children and they are going to do it right.

In the afternoon, Chanyeol calls the head nurses of the wards that have agreed to his plan of a hospital trick-or-treating trip for the kids who aren’t too sick to join in, reminding them of the event and making sure they’re still agreeable to him leading a little crowd of costumed kids through their wards. The staff on the orthopaedics ward have offered to dress up in costumes, and the hospital chaplains proposed putting candles and fake cobwebs in the small chapel and tell a scary story or two to the older kids later in the evening. Chanyeol knows that's going to be a hit with a few of the older admitted kids.

There's a small knock on his door. He looks up to find 7-year-old Seo Mirae standing in the doorway, next to 5-year-old Son Daewon she shares her room with. He sends them both a big smile.

“Dr. Park,” Mirae says, and Daewon walks towards him. When he gets close enough, he grabs onto Chanyeol’s hand and pulls it back towards Mirae and the doorway. Chanyeol chuckles, gets up from his chair and lets Daewon pull him across the office.

“What is it, Mirae?” he asks the little girl. Daewon is still holding onto his hand.

“Will you help us pick our costumes?” It’s a tiny little voice, unsure of the question and a little afraid of rejection, but Chanyeol could never reject the request.

“Of course I will! Let’s go find Nurse Yun and the costumes, shall we?” He takes Mirae’s hand as well and leads them down the spooky hallway and into the large play area where Nurse Yun sits in the middle of a group of excited children with a lot of large bags spread around him. The nurse looks up and smiles at him, and Chanyeol reciprocates the smile. Mirae lets go of Chanyeol’s hand when she spies a Queen Elsa dress amongst all the costumes and walks very determinedly towards it, not needing his help after all. Daewon seems shyer, clinging onto Chanyeol’s hand and glancing nervously at the excited children.

“Hey, Daewon,” Chanyeol says. Daewon looks up at him with wide eyes. “Do you want to be scary for the party or do you want to be a superhero?”

Daewon thinks for a few seconds before he whispers “scary”. Chanyeol’s heart melts. He’s been told he must be immune to the cuteness of children, since he works with them on a daily basis, but Chanyeol doesn't see how immunity to children can be a thing of this world.

“What about a ghost?” He walks Daewon closer to Nurse Yun and the costumes. Daewon shakes his head. Okay, no ghosts. What else is scary for a 5-year-old?

They look through different costumes of varying fear-factors, but Daewon doesn’t fancy any of them. When Chanyeol has almost given up, Daewon’s eyes find a small costume, buried beneath everything else. It’s a scarecrow with fake hay sticking out of the pant legs, sleeves and the collar. By the way Daewon holds it up and stares at it with shining eyes, Chanyeol knows it’s a hit. He’s sure Daewon’s parents will chuckle when they see their kid in a scarecrow costume.

Mirae finds him just as he has finished helping Daewon into his scarecrow costume and spins around in front of him to make her skirts fly out.

“How do I look, Dr. Park?”

Chanyeol widens his eyes in wonder and she giggles at his expression.

“You look beautiful, milady.”

“It’s “your majesty”,” she corrects him, and Chanyeol bows down on his knees, hands touching the floor in front of him as he apologizes for his big mistake and begs her not to execute him. Mirae laughs, high-pitched and full of joy, and grants him mercy. Chanyeol thanks her profusely for her benevolence as he gets up. Nurse Yun is laughing at his antics and not trying to hide it at all.

When all the children have picked their costumes, Chanyeol retreats back into his office. Behind his door, where his doctor’s coat usually hangs, is the adult-sized costume he bought specially for this occasion. Yeonseok made fun of him all evening when Chanyeol brought it home, but he's sure it will blow away everyone who sees it. It’s a great costume with working special effects and he knows for sure it’ll be a hit amongst the children. It also feels somewhat fitting being Iron Man to protect the children in the ward from the horrors they have to face.

It doesn’t take long to get dressed and when he’s done, in place of the tall, smiling doctor that usually walks the hallways stands a superhero. Smiling to himself, he leaves his office, getting a few giggles and applause from the nurses he passes on his way towards the largest conference room on the children's ward. Today it’s not a conference room. They’ve borrowed every artificial skeleton in the hospital they could get their hands on and have them dressed up in various costumes, standing around in the corners and at the entrance. One of the skeletons at the entrance holds a sign that says Welcome in beautiful calligraphy.

The kitchen staff have provided a party meal of Halloween-themed foods and as the costumed children take their seats, the nurses and Chanyeol start serving them. The noise is overwhelming, but it’s so loaded with happiness that Chanyeol can’t even find it annoying. Parents join in when dessert is served, laughing with their children and helping the younger ones get the goodies. They have ordered a large Halloween cake from a bakery not too far from the hospital. But the evening won’t be complete before they have gone on their trick-or-treating adventure .

Close to 7 pm, Chanyeol rounds up all the children that are ready to go trick-or-treating. A few of the youngest ones have fallen asleep, but he rounds up around 20 children who are ready to get some candy. The nurse at the paediatrics reception desk hands them all a little pumpkin-shaped basket, and with a fist thrown towards the ceiling, Chanyeol marches his little army of trick-or-treaters towards the elevator.

They visit orthopaedics first. In front of the reception desk, Chanyeol instructs his children to not knock on closed doors. He knows they have closed the doors to the patients who won’t appreciate a visit from a crowd of excited children. He sends them into the ward in groups of four, and hears their excited exclamations when patients hand over the candy and cookies he’s supplied all the wards with. A couple of orthopaedic nurses have dressed up and prank a few of the older kids by jumping out from corners, eliciting excited shrieks and giggles. When he gathers them up, he can see the joy glowing off faces that are too often crying or in pain, and it makes all the effort he’s put in to make this happen more than worth it.

The palliative ward is full of positive surprises, both for Chanyeol’s kids and the admitted patients and their relatives. Walking down the maternity ward is a little scary for a few of the youngest children, so Chanyeol puts on his mask and walks them safely through, scoring a few giggles from the women who has just given birth a few hours earlier. They go from the maternity ward to oncology to radiology and the lab to gastroenterology before they end up in the ED. He’s carrying 4-year-old Hyunae in his arms and she clings to his chest, almost asleep, as they enter. The ED is as busy as always, but the waiting area lightens up when they enter in their costumes and loudly proclaim “trick or treat!”. The nurses discreetly hand candy to the waiting patients so they too can treat the children.

When they’ve visited all the wards he’s made arrangements with, Chanyeol gathers the kids in the entrance hall.

“Who wants to hear a horror story?” he asks. As he suspected, a couple of the older kids raise their hands and exclaim to each other excitedly.

“Okay! Let’s go!”

He’s followed by cheers as he leads the group to the church where the chaplain is ready to greet them, dressed in a black hooded cloak and holding a large white candle. The boys are beyond excited and Chanyeol sends them off with a smile. The chaplain will bring them back to the ward when they’re done.

He leads the rest of the group back to the ward. Parents send him grateful smiles as they put their children to bed. Tomorrow he will have to deal with the aftermath of clearing up all the decorations and dealing with the children who will doubtless be overtired and cranky, but it’s worth it, looking at the smiles and content sleeping faces he sees around him now.

Sitting back in his office, Iron Man takes off his mask, leans back against his chair and runs a hand through his hair, smiling in satisfaction at a job well done.

\---

Joonmyun is so tired he can barely walk straight. He was fine during the surgery, but now he’s finally out and the patient is safe in the care of the ICU staff, the stress of the long and complex procedure has caught up with him. Focusing for eleven hours straight is a demanding thing to ask of a person, and Joonmyun had been tired even before he went in. The state he’s in now reminds him of when he was a first-year resident and had been so exhausted he’d fallen asleep standing up, leaning against the wall in an operating theatre during a procedure he was meant to be observing. He better keep walking down this hallway because if he stops, he might give a repeat performance of that long-ago day. It’s a good thing Yejin took the car after her appointment this morning, because Joonmyun is certainly not safe to drive right now.

“Excuse me, doctor? Doctor?” The words are repeated and his wrist is caught by a strong hand before Joonmyun realises that the words might actually apply to him. He stops and looks blankly into the face of the tall young man who’s caught hold of him.

“Can you show me the way to the 6-hour room?” The man asks him. “I was given directions, but I must have gotten turned around.”

6-hour room. The words slowly filter into his brain. Right. The 6-hour room is where they keep the bodies of patients for the first 6 hours after they’ve been pronounced dead, before they're sent to the mortuary. His long silence seems to prompt the young man into saying something else, though really, Joonmyun's soulless stare is just because he's so tired his thoughts have gone into slow motion.

“I’m a police officer,” he says, and flashes an ID card Joonmyun’s tired eyes can’t even begin to focus on. “I need to see the remains of a patient who’s recently been reported dead in connection with a case.”

Joonmyun nods and makes a heroic attempt at a smile. If it’s a police officer, he better do what he wants, even if the hard plastic seats in the nearby waiting area are starting to look like a very attractive place for him to sleep tonight. 

“Sure,” he says, and turns around to lead the officer to the 6-hour room. Like the mortuary, it’s not well sign-posted, mainly because it’s not considered very tactful to remind people that they or their relatives might end up in one of these rooms for dead people before long, so it’s not really surprising this police officer has gotten lost.

“It would be helpful to have the opinion of a professional,” the police officer says as they walk, “if you can spare me ten minutes of your time.”

Joonmyun shrugs. He’s not a mortician, but they’ll have all gone home by now, and he supposes he doesn’t have much choice when asked by the police. “Sure,” he says again, then realises how unfriendly he’s probably coming across.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” he apologises as they walk down the short ramp that will take them to the half-level the 6-hour room is on. The corridor is dim with night-time lighting, and there’s nobody else around. “I’ve just come out of an 11-hour emergency surgery, and I’m a little tired.”

“Wow,” the police officer says. “That’s a long one. What was it?”

“Impalement injury to the chest. The guy fell on a rebar and it transfixed the left pleura and ventricle. He came in skewered on it like a kebab.” Was that inappropriate, Joonmyun wonders. His tiredness has bypassed his filter. Oh well, too late now.

Luckily, the police officer doesn’t seem to mind. He gives a low whistle. “What did you do? CPB?”

It doesn’t occur to Joonmyun that it’s strange for a police officer to not only be able to follow his description, but know the correct surgical procedure and even refer to it by its medical abbreviation. He’s too tired to take anything beyond face value.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a miracle he came in alive, let alone survived the removal procedure.” The joke the radiologist made just before the surgery flashes back into his mind, and more words he’s too tired to filter spill from his mouth. “I guess he’s not a vampire, anyway, since he survived being staked through the heart.”

Apparently the police officer appreciates the joke Joonmyun would never normally have made to anyone but another medical professional, because he laughs. Maybe police officers have the same morbid sense of humour as doctors.

They come to the door of the 6-hour room and before Joonmyun can swipe his access card, the police officer raises a fist and knocks on it. Joonmyun blinks at him.

“Everyone’s dead in there," he points out. "It’s not like they’re going to get up and open the door for us.”

The cop grins. “True. Force of habit.” He steps back a little and gestures to the door. “After you.”

\---

Baekhyun is a corpse.

He’s a very good corpse. There’s nobody better than a doctor to be able to know exactly what a dead body should look like, and even if Baekhyun and Sehun aren’t in specialties that deal with dead bodies very often, they’ve both been through medical school and dissected cadavers. They’ve replicated the cold, dull, bluish look on Baekhyun by mixing together a thick zinc-based cream Sehun has in his dermatology supplies and a drop of the blue dye used for urine drug screening they begged from the pharmacists. The mixture, applied to Baekhyun’s face and neck, is very effective. He looks dead even when he’s walking around, and they’ve already managed to accidentally scare the living daylights out of several nurses before even making it to the 6-hour room.

He looks like a very good corpse, but maybe he’s a little too hyper right now to be good at imitating one. Sehun wouldn’t let him eat any more candy, patiently explaining that corpses don’t have hyperglycaemic tremors, but Baekhyun doesn’t really need sugar to be hyped up. It’s his permanent state of being, and lying here in a cold, dark room, covered by a sheet, with the dubious company of two real corpses on a couple of the other beds, is very boring. He hopes Sehun finds a victim soon. He peeps out from under his sheet at the wall clock. It’s only been ten minutes? It feels like at least an hour!

There’s a knock on the door, the signal they agreed on to warn him of Sehun’s arrival with a victim, and Baekhyun quickly drops the sheet back over his face, takes a deep breath, and holds it. He listens with suppressed glee as the door opens and light from the corridor falls across the top of the sheet covering his blue-white face.

“Who do you need to see?” The voice is male and slightly familiar, though Baekhyun can’t quite place it without seeing the person’s face.

“Patient Byun,” Sehun says, and Baekhyun fights to keep his composure. He mustn’t laugh and ruin it - though probably a laughing corpse would be enough to scare anyone.

There’s a rustle while Sehun and his victim check the other bodies. This is part of the plan, to make the victim really convinced that the only living things in this room are Sehun and the victim himself, but now Baekhyun finds himself wishing they’d abandoned that part of the plan. It’s taking longer than he expected, and his lungs are starting to cry out at him to breathe. He bites down the inside of his lip and silently begs Sehun to hurry up.

The sheet over his face is pulled away, and he keeps his eyes closed while Sehun pretends to recognize him.

“This is the one,” he says. “Dr. Kim, thank you for helping me out. Could you examine him and tell me what you think his cause of death is?”

“It’ll be on the medical records,” the familiar voice says. It sounds tired.

“Yes, but I’d like another opinion,” Sehun insists. Baekhyun thinks he’s going to explode if he holds his breath much longer. Ten more seconds, he begs his screaming lungs. Just when he’s gotten really close…

He feels the movement of air brush past him as the victim’s hand reaches towards his neck to check the carotid pulse. This is his moment!

His eyes fly open and he drags in a huge gasp of air, half-sitting up as he does so. He’s so desperate to breathe that the air comes in with a loud, dragging wheeze.

The victim screams. He screams high and long and loud, stumbling backwards until he comes up against the metal workbench behind him with a loud crash. At first Baekhyun is too busy panting to be able to laugh, but Sehun is doubled over with laughter, and soon Baekhyun is joining him. The victim’s scream trails off into a strangled choking noise and he slides down the workbench until he’s sitting on the floor, his eyes like saucers as he stares at Baekhyun.

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun manages to stop laughing long enough to say. He gets off the table, but this only causes the doctor to scream again. It’s such a high-pitched scream to come out of a man, like a little girl’s scream, and it makes Baekhyun giggle again. Sehun is still laughing too hard to speak.

He goes over to the light switch and flicks it on, and in the light he recognizes the white-faced doctor sitting slumped against the medical counter. His eyes widen.

“Dr. Kim!” He exclaims, a hand going to his mouth. Oh my god, he thinks. This idiot Sehun managed to pick one of the top and most under-demand surgeons in the entire hospital. He runs back over and crouches down in front of the terrified doctor. “I’m not really dead,” he says. “It was a prank.”

Kim Joonmyun stares at him for a long moment, slow realisation dawning in his face.

“T-t-hat was scary,” he stammers, and then, to Baekhyun’s horror, he bursts into tears.

Baekhyun and Sehun exchange stricken glances. The scream was great, but they hadn’t expected to make anyone cry.

Baekhyun wraps his arms around the sobbing surgeon, hugging him tightly. “Don't cry! It was only me!"

“Too scary!” Joonmyun wails into his shoulder.

Sehun crawls over to rub his back soothingly. “Sorry, Dr. Kim,” he says. “I didn’t know you would get that freaked out.”

“We’re sorry!” Baekhyun repeats, but Joonmyun seems to have lost any control over himself, and is crying so hard Baekhyun can feel his shoulder getting wet.

“It’s Halloween, you know?” Sehun explains. “I thought most people would expect something like this going into a room of dead bodies on Halloween.”

Joonmyun shakes his head against Baekhyun’s shoulder. “I d-didn’t know,” he sobs. “I was in t-theatre all day.”

Baekhyun feels terrible. He’s pranked a heroic cardiothoracic surgeon within an inch of his life, and the poor guy is falling apart in his arms. “Please stop crying,” he begs, patting Joonmyun’s back. “We’re really sorry!”

“You screamed like a little girl,” Sehun says, and muffles a giggle behind his hand. At this, Joonmyun looks up from Baekhyun’s shoulder. His face is soaked with tears as he stares between them both. Baekhyun bites his lip nervously. He doesn’t know Joonmyun well, and he has no idea how he’s going to react now. If he gets mad at them, they definitely deserve it.

There’s a small snort, and suddenly the shaking of sobs in Baekhyun’s arms has turned to half sob, half laugh. Joonmyun is laughing through his tears now, and even if the laughter is more than a little hysterical, relief floods through Baekhyun as he hugs Joonmyun again. It's better than anger anyway.

“I did,” Joonmyun acknowledges. Tears are still leaking out of his eyes. “Sorry about this. It’s just reaction. I’m overtired.”

“I bet,” Sehun shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have picked you if I knew you’d been in theatre for eleven hours, but it was too late by the time I found out.”

“Eleven hours?” Baekhyun gasps. “Sehun! The poor guy!”

“Hey, you were a willing accomplice!” Sehun protests. He stands up and finds a box of tissues on the counter - this is a room where people often cry, so there are supplies available - and hands them to Joonmyun, who presses a wad of them against his face.

“I got a stake out of someone’s heart today,” Joonmyun’s voice is muffled beneath the tissues, “and this is the thanks I get?”

“What, really?”

Sehun nods. “He told me that too. I guess it is Halloween.”

“You’re not really a cop, are you?” Joonmyun sniffles, and Sehun laughs.

“I’m a dermatologist,” he says, and Joonmyun groans.

“I can’t believe I fell for it,” he wipes his eyes, his chest still heaving a little with the reaction-sobs. He turns to Baekhyun. “You’re in plastics, right? Dr. Byun?”

“That’s me,” Baekhyun admits. “I’ve consulted for you on surgical scarring a couple of times.”

“You don’t look so good,” Joonmyun tells him, concern creeping onto his wet face. “Are you feeling alright?”

This makes Sehun crack up again, and Baekhyun explains that he’s wearing death makeup. Joonmyun’s brain is definitely not on top form tonight, and Baekhyun supposes he can hardly blame him.

Eventually Joonmyun manages to stop his tears from falling, and Baekhyun uses some of the tissues to wipe his own face clean so that he doesn’t terrify anyone else. When they’re safely out of the 6-hour room and in the main corridor, he can see just how awful poor Joonmyun looks. He’s still white-faced, and his eyes are red and swollen from crying and ringed with dark shadows of exhaustion. Baekhyun ends up hugging him again out of pure sympathy.

“How are you getting home?” he asks, and when Joonmyun says the subway, he shakes his head.

“I’ve got my car, I’ll drive you. No, really, let me. It’s my apology,” he says when Joonmyun attempts to protest.

He leads the way down to the basement carpark, and Joonmyun passes out in his passenger seat before Baekhyun has even driven up the ramp and out onto the street. He shakes his head and a grin crosses his lips as he remembers that shrill, girlish scream. He’d never have intentionally made anyone cry, least of all an exhausted cardiothoracic surgeon, but he can’t deny that the scream reaction was better than they’d ever dreamed of getting.

His phone makes the plinking noise it does when there’s a post on the in-hospital messaging app, and he checks it at a red light. Sure enough, Sehun has made good of his original intention and posted the video he’d set his phone up to record on the app’s staff-wide bulletin board channel. He glances across at the peacefully sleeping Joonmyun, then snickers quietly to himself.

The poor guy is never going to live this down.


	7. November 10th

When Jongin rounds the orthopaedic ward after lunch, he’s met with a crowd surrounding the patient in room 212. She had a hip replacement yesterday and what looks like her entire family has come to bring her home. Mrs. Kim is a sweet, grandmotherly woman whose enthusiasm and gratitude shines out of her like a light. When he enters her room, her face brightens more than ever.

“Dr. Kim, Dr. Kim,” she calls, beckoning him closer. Jongin smiles at her and obediently comes closer to her bed.

“This is my daughter.” She pulls at the sleeve of a woman standing by the bed. When her daughter has politely bowed to him and he’s greeted her back, she releases her sleeve and starts gesturing to the other people around her.

“This is my son-in-law, my grandson, and my granddaughter, Eunjung.” A glint comes into her eye when she introduces her granddaughter, and Jongin immediately senses where this is going. His immediate instinct is to find some excuse to make a hasty retreat, but he can’t really do that, so he just stands there smiling and trying not to look as awkward as he feels.

“She’s 27, she’s a florist, and she’s single!” Mrs. Kim winks broadly at him.

“Grandma!” her granddaughter cries, high-pitched with embarrassment. Mrs. Kim just laughs and winks at Jongin once again. He tries to think of something to say that isn’t going to offend anyone or betray his own embarrassment, but Eunjung gets in first. She apologizes profusely on her grandmother’s behalf and Jongin assures her it’s fine, relieved that he doesn’t have to explain that he’s already dating. He likes to be friendly with his patients and accepting of all their quirks, but this particular topic is difficult for him. His relationship with Sohee is his secret so far, and when he does eventually find the courage to open up about it, the first person to know definitely won't be a patient.

He changes the subject. “How are you today, Mrs. Kim?”

“Oh, just wonderful! The physiotherapist was here earlier and we walked around. I did well, didn’t I?” she asks her husband who’s sitting in the chair beside her bed.

“That’s great. How’s your pain?” Jongin asks as he moves her blanket enough to look at the wound site. The bandage isn’t bloody and nothing is seeping from the wound. The yellow disinfectant from the surgery is slowly wearing off. It all looks just how he'd expect.

“Nothing to worry about, dear. I’m fighting fit!” Jongin laughs a little. That’s probably not completely true, but he appreciates her positivity. She's bound to feel pain for at least the first week after surgery, though it will lessen the more she uses the hip. Jongin will prescribe some stronger painkillers for the first couple of days at home.

“I looked at your postoperative X-rays earlier and everything looks fine, so I’d like to discharge you and get you home today. Does that sound good?”

Mrs. Kim takes his hand and pats it lovingly.

“Oh, dearie, I would love to go home. But don’t take that to mean I haven’t enjoyed being here! Everybody has been so kind and you’re a wonderful doctor. I would trust you with my life.”

She's making Jongin nervous. It’s not that patients are never grateful, but Mrs. Kim is on another level, and he’s not used to being shown this kind of overflowing affection. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, smiling in an attempt to cover his shyness. Luckily, Mrs. Kim lets go of his hand on her own before he has to try and figure out how to pull away without being rude. She looks around at her daughter. “Where are the chocolates for Dr. Kim?”

Jongin starts to protest, but it falls on deaf ears. She holds out a large gift box of chocolates and a pretty little bouquet of pale orange and purple miniature roses.

“Eunjung arranged these,” she tells him shamelessly. “Isn’t she talented?”

“Grandma, stop it!” Eunjung hides her face in mortification.

“They’re lovely, but really, Mrs. Kim, I can’t take these,” Jongin tries. Mrs. Kim is having none of it, though, and she pushes the chocolate box and the bouquet against his hands until he’s forced to take them if he doesn’t want them to all end up on the floor. He holds them uncertainly, trying to calculate how much the chocolates and flowers might be worth. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with the management. It’s against the law for professionals to accept gifts worth more than 30,000 won, and the hospital enforces this strictly. It’s always difficult for Jongin to refuse gifts which come from a patient’s heart, and it’s so hard to explain to older patients who have grown up with the gifting culture and simply don’t understand the new law.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Kim tells him. “The nurses got their chocolates, and you will have yours too!”

She reaches for her purse, takes out her wallet, and looks up at him with a gleam in her eye. Jongin takes a horrified step back, chocolate and flowers still in hand.

“Mrs. Kim, I really can’t take money,” he says hurriedly. “I’ll accept the chocolates and flowers, but I cannot take money from you.”

She just laughs at him, mischief sparkling in her eyes. It dawns on Jongin that she has just tricked him into accepting the chocolates and flowers, and he has to laugh. Damn, she’s good. Mrs. Kim settles back against her pillows and gives a satisfied smile. Her husband takes her hand and pats it gently.

“Thank you for making me as good as new, dearie,” she says. “When can I leave?”

Jongin tries to collect his thoughts. He feels overwhelmed by the whole interaction. “I’ll have the nurse help you pack up and finish the discharging process, and you can leave straight afterwards.”

He leaves the room when he’s sure Mrs. Kim and her family have no more questions. A nurse giggles at his dazed expression from the nursing station. She’s eating a piece of chocolate from an even larger box hidden behind the desk.

“Someone’s got an admirer,” she sings.

“I thought I did, but it looks like she’s also quite fond of you lot. I don’t know if I can handle the competition,” Jongin teases back. He’s glad Mrs. Kim showed her appreciation to the nurses too. Without the nurses, he and the other physicians couldn’t do half the work they’re doing.

The nurse pops her last bit of chocolate into her mouth and leans back in her chair.

“I don’t know about that. You got flowers, we didn’t.”

Jongin puts a finger thoughtfully on his chin. “Hmm, I guess you’re right. I am her favourite.”

The nurse’s laugh follows him down the hallway to his office. When he gets there, he finds a mug and fills it with water from the hall cooler, then balances the small bouquet of flowers in it and admires the sunset colours in the tiny roses. It’s much too pretty for him to keep to himself. An idea drifts into his mind that puts a gentle smile on his face.

When his shift is over, Jongin changes out of the semi-professional attire he wears beneath his doctor’s coat and into dark jeans and a white collared shirt. It’s ten minutes past seven and already dark outside. The street lights cast an orange glow onto the roads as he walks the few minutes to the backstreet where he parked his car.

It’s become almost routine lately for Jongin to head to Sohee’s apartment after his long shifts, instead of his own. He loves to be with her, to cuddle into her warmth, to feel loved. He’s barely even in his own apartment anymore; hers seems warmer somehow, warmer in ways that have nothing to do with the temperature. Maybe it’s the multi-coloured crocheted blanket she worked on for months on her couch, or the framed pictures of her big, loving family on the walls. Maybe it is simply her presence that makes everything so much better. He’s there so often that she’s started teasing that he might as well just move in with her. He senses that behind the teasing she's up for a more serious discussion about it, but he still laughs it off every time. Moving in together means acknowledging their relationship is serious, and that's something his mind jerks back from like a hand touching a hot stove.

Tonight though, instead of heading to Sohee’s apartment, he drives downtown. He’s about ten minutes late by the time he gets to the restaurant where he’s to meet Dr. Lee Taeyeon. Taeyeon is a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon in her sixties who was his chief of department during his first year of residency, which he did at another hospital. She’s both his personal hero and his inspiration.

The heat surrounds him as he enters the five-star restaurant and finds Taeyeon sitting near a large window, slender fingers holding the stem of a wine glass. Her white hair is pulled into an elegant bun and silver-framed glasses sit low on her nose. She’s completely immersed in the menu and doesn’t look up until Jongin folds his trenchcoat over the back of his chair and sits down.

“Jongin,” she exclaims, smiling up at him. “How delightful of you to show up.” She’s teasing him and he knows it.

He sits down and holds out the little bouquet Mrs. Kim gave him earlier. The flowers have weathered the day spent in his coffee mug well, and he's pleased to see her eyes light up. She brings the bouquet close to her face and breathes in the scent.

“This is sweet of you,” she tells him, laying them down on the table. “They’re lovely. It’s been a long time since I was given flowers.”

Jongin smiles shyly. The joy he gets from giving the flowers to her far outweighs what he got in receiving them.

“You started without me, I see.” He nods at her wine glass, and she chuckles.

“Of course I did, you’re ten minutes late!”

Jongin just smiles. As usual, her presence is calming. They order their food and he gets a glass of wine as well. Taeyeon is no longer working as a surgeon and has moved into part-time research, but she tells him she has no intentions of fully retiring or else she'd go mad with boredom. After their food arrives she leans forward, just a few inches closer, but Jongin immediately senses the change in intensity.

“How are you, Jongin?” The question sounds innocent enough, but it’s loaded with the weight of a heavy past. Jongin shrinks a little in his chair. He always does when she asks about his well-being so directly. He has never found it easy to put his thoughts and feelings into words, even though he knows she understands. Ever since she confronted him about the bruises and the burns, she has been perceptive of his mood. She accepted him without judgement when he was at his lowest, and she accepts him with open arms when he’s at his best.

“I’m fine,” he says. Taeyeon raises an eyebrow and Jongin continues before she can ask him to elaborate. “I have something I want to tell you." He squirms a little in his chair. "It’s good news.”

Taeyeon’s smile widens ever so slightly.

“Who is she?”

Jongin feels his eyes go wide. He has been practicing this conversation with Taeyeon in his head since he realized he really loved Sohee, debating with himself over and over again about how to tell her and whether it’s really okay to discuss his worries with her, and it turns out he doesn’t even need to say a word.

“Her name is Jeong Sohee,” he says and bites his lower lip, heart fluttering a little when he says her name out loud. “She’s 30 and works as a zookeeper. We’ve been together close to five months now.”

Shyness creeps up on him, colouring his cheekbones pink as he tells Taeyeon all about Sohee. By the time he's finished, he feels like he's reduced to a five-year-old telling his mom about his kindergarten crush. Taeyeon just smiles warmly and reaches out to pat his hand.

“She sounds wonderful. What about you, though? How do you feel about this?”

“I'm..." Jongin looks away. "I'm scared."

He's been hiding his fear pretty well, even from himself most of the time, taking each day as it comes and enjoying the present. But telling Taeyeon that he has a girlfriend forces him to acknowledge to himself that this is real. He's in love with Sohee, and it could all come crashing down around him and destroy him again. Old emotions shiver in his chest, and memories creep out of the boxes in the corners of his mind he locks them in, taunting.

Taeyeon softly strokes his hand and watches his face, and the contact slowly brings him back, forces him to stay grounded.

When he’s looking at her with eyes that are actually seeing her and not echoes of the past, she asks him, “What’s scaring you?”

Jongin lowers his gaze, watching her fingers still stroking his hand. “I’m scared she’ll turn, like - like that person did, I think. She was so sweet at first, and I was so sure she loved me, and - ” he breaks off, breathes, continues. “I know it’s not logical. I know most women aren’t like her. I mean, you aren’t.”

He looks up again to meet her eyes, and she smiles kindly at him.

“Do you love Sohee?”

Jongin nods. He does. The butterflies in his stomach, the smile on his face, the overwhelming feeling of love when she’s around - Jongin loves Sohee very much.

“Have you talked to her about what happened?” Taeyeon lets go of his hand and takes a sip of her wine. Now that they’re talking, she no longer needs to ground him by touch.

Jongin shakes his head. “I don’t want her to know. I'm scared she'll think I'm weak. Pathetic. I don't want her to see me that way.”

Taeyeon’s gaze hardens. It’s not directed at Jongin. Every time he tells about his fears, she turns tough and protective against the world that didn’t take him seriously when he needed it.

“Jongin, do you still have scars?”

He nods.

“What did you tell her they were from?”

“I don’t think she’s noticed them.”

Taeyeon looks skeptical.

“Surely you’ve had sex. She must have seen them,” she says without a hint of embarrassment. Jongin chokes and buries his flaming face in his napkin.

“Mo-om,” he whines, and then realizes what he’s just said. “Uh, I mean...” he stumbles, feeling his face flush even more. Taeyeon just chuckles.

“Trust me, she has seen the scars, whether she’s decided to mention them or not. Tell her. If you want to move forward, you'll need to trust her.”

Jongin takes a deep breath and tries to will the blush away. He can’t worry about telling Sohee when he’s too busy being mortified. She knows he considers her a second mother, but he’s never called her "mom" to her face. As usual, though, Taeyeon takes everything in her stride.

“Jongin, promise me you’ll tell Sohee about it before too long.” He nods, still too flustered to use actual words. “And drink your wine, son. It’s getting late.”

The mischief has returned to her voice. She’s deliberately calling him son to rectify his mistake, telling him that it's okay, that he doesn't have to be embarrassed.

When Jongin has hugged her goodbye and sent her off in a taxi, he wanders slowly back to his car. Once there, he sits behind the wheel and stares out at the street. He replays the conversation with Taeyeon, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the cold steering wheel as he counts his breaths and tries not to let anxiety take over. There’s so much to say and it’s so difficult to say it, and he’s terrified he'll destroy the good thing he has. But Taeyeon is right. At some point he will have to tell Sohee. He will have to take the step of trusting again, and deal with the aftermath, whatever it may be.

He shakes his head, turns on the ignition and drives into the dark night. Initially he heads towards his own apartment, but halfway there, he pulls an impulsive u-turn. The roads seem to go on forever as he leaves the built-up city area for the residential suburbs. When he finally parks, it’s half past nine and he’s outside a small house with a garden in front. It holds two apartments, but looks just like any other house on the quiet street. He looks up hopefully and finds light shining from the first floor window. She’s still awake.

He won’t tell Sohee just yet. He needs time to think about it, to process it all and to gather a lot more courage before he can to that. But he doesn’t want to be alone tonight, either. His thoughts and the memories he’d rather forget are too powerful to fight on his own tonight.

He leaves his car parked by the curb and climbs the small staircase to the first floor apartment to ring the bell. Sohee’s face when she opens the door lights up in both surprise and genuine happiness. Her hair is pulled away from her face with a pink fluffy hair band and her clean skin shines with newly applied toner.

“Jongin!” She pulls him inside and wraps her arms around him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were busy tonight.”

Jongin closes his eyes and holds her closer. The warmth of her embrace feels even better than usual. They stand there, hugging in front of the door for what feels like a small eternity, but Jongin needs it. After a few moments, he leans down to press his lips against hers. Eyes closed and kissing, he notices just how right it feels. It’s unlike anything he has felt before, and he has to trust that Sohee feels it too.

“I missed you,” he whispers into her ear, and Sohee giggles at the tickle of his breath. She squirms out of his embrace and pulls him into the apartment.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asks when they're sitting on the couch. She’s half-lying in his lap, playing with the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt.

“I just missed you. Isn't that enough?”

Sohee looks up at him through her bangs.

“Of course it’s enough, silly. It’s just…you had me a little worried, just showing up like this. Are you okay?”

Jongin lets his fingers tangle through the softness of her hair.

“I'm fine," he says, smiling to show her that it's true. He is fine, now that he's here. "I...I need to tell you something someday, something about my past, but...I'm just not quite ready to talk about it yet.”

She smiles back up at him.

“I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

They go to bed soon after. Sohee falls asleep in minutes and is soon snoring lightly, curled up adorably against his shoulder. Jongin finds it a lot harder to fall asleep. It’s never been easy for him to talk about his feelings, but lately, three words are have been trying to find their way out of his heart. The words are so true and so honest, Jongin is afraid to say them out loud. But laying here in bed with Sohee, her warm skin pressed against his, coaxes them out of him.

“I love you,” he whispers. He presses a light kiss to her hair, and she sighs contentedly in her sleep.

Jongin smiles against her and closes his eyes.

\---

Baekhyun sings along to the radio as he drives home to pick up Nari. He’s finished his surgical schedule on time today, and made the new intern sort out the disastrous mess of unfiled notes he’s left on his desk so that he could get away before six. He’s got big plans for tonight.

He exits the freeway and flicks his headlights on. The evening is growing dark, and a couple of minutes later the street lights go on above his head, casting an amber glow over the residential streets as he navigates the quiet maze of tall apartment buildings. He drives into the complex where his apartment building nestles among seven others, all identical apart from the building number and the emblem of a different flower plastered on their sides. The buildings surround a central square that houses a children’s playground and a small convenience store, and he reduces his speed as he approaches his apartment building. As usual, there are a bunch of teenagers playing soccer in the quiet road surrounding the square. He flicks his headlights at them and waves cheerfully as they get out of the way.

He pulls into the 5-minute zone in front of his building and idles the engine, messaging Nari to come down quickly so that he doesn’t have to drive into the underground parking area. As an afterthought, he reminds her to wear a coat. The November nights get icier with every passing day, and they’re going to be outside. Nari doesn’t know that, because he’s refused to disclose where he’s taking her tonight, and he doesn’t want her to be unprepared for the cold night air.

His girlfriend appears through the glass doors of the lobby a couple of minutes later, backlit by the warm lighting glowing from the inside of the building. She’s neat and chic as always in a short red kilt paired with leggings and ankle boots, a cable-knit sweater, and a black beret perched on her gleaming bobbed hair. She looks both cute and beautiful, and he feels a surge of affection for her as he leans across to open the passenger door from inside.

Nari slips into the car, breath already clouding as the outside air temperature drops. She’s carrying her coat and handbag, and Baekhyun takes them from her and twists around to place them on the back seat.

“So unfair that it’s winter already,” Nari moans, reaching over to turn the heater up. “Where did summer go?”

Baekhyun immediately starts calculating how much leave he has accrued. Maybe he can take a couple of days off and take her to Thailand for a bit of warmth. Even a few days would help break up the long, bleak Seoul winter.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asks as he drives away, scattering teenage soccer players for the second time into the near darkness.

“I told you, it’s a surprise.” Baekhyun gives her his trademark impish grin.

“Well, I hope wherever-it-is has food. I’m starving.”

“It does,” he assures her.

“How was work?”

Baekhyun tells her as he drives all about the rhinoplasty he got to do today. It’s exciting for him to get to do a rhinoplasty, becuase most people go to private cosmetic surgery clinics for it rather than a hospital. This particular one was linked to a broken nose that caused the patient ongoing nasal breathing and snoring issues, and Baekhyun got to fix the airway at the same time as raising the bridge of the nose for cosmetic appeal. Nari has heard about so many procedures over the six years they’ve been together that she’s familiar with medical terminology, and he doesn’t have to dumb anything down for her. When he’s finished describing the procedure, he forces himself to stop chattering about nose jobs – Nari is always tolerant of his enthusiasm, but she has her limits - and asks her about her day.

“Fine,” she says indifferently. “Just work, you know. Same as it ever is.”

She doesn’t often talk to him about work these days. Maybe there’s really nothing new to say about working in an office. Baekhyun tries asking a couple more questions about what projects she’s working on, but she’s not very talkative. Maybe she’s tired. He starts to tell her about how well Jin did assisting him in the rhinoplasty, the older resident’s first one, but Nari interrupts him.

“Enough with the rhinoplasty already,” she groans. “Can we just listen to music?”

“Are you saying my descriptions of cartilage grafting aren't entirely riveting? I'm hurt," Baekhyun laughs. He turns the radio up a bit and taps his fingers on the wheel to the beat of the latest pop hits. The roads aren’t busy now that it’s after six, and ten minutes later he’s driving into one of the parking areas along the side of the Han River.

“Ooh, a night market!” Nari perks up as she looks out of the window. Baekhyun smiles, pleased with himself. Nari always has her eye out for things that are different and unique, and markets are a great place to find that kind of thing. The park is already busy with people, stalls and food trailers are set up, and the aisles between them are hung above with multicolored lights and paper lanterns. A small stage has been set up closer to the river and an indie band is playing to a gathering audience, filling the night with music.

They get out, their breath instantly clouding. It’s almost dark now, the sky above them a rich, deep violet, and Baekhyun links his arm with Nari’s as they walk towards the market.

“Food first?” he asks, and she nods, expertly scanning the stalls.

“Oh, perfect. I’ve been craving soondae for days,” she exclaims, tugging him towards one of the stalls where a couple of women in heavy red aprons are frying it up on a flat grill. Baekhyun wrinkles his nose, but follows her willingly enough. He’s never been keen on soondae - there’s something about organ meats that grosses him out - but Nari loves it, and he’s pushed his personal tastes aside for her many times.

They eat soondae standing up at the tent, sharing a plate. Baekhyun washes his bites down with Coke. Nari usually scolds him when he drinks soda, especially soda containing caffeine, but tonight she doesn’t mention it. Baekhyun is grateful, because he really doesn’t think he can stomach soondae without something to cut the greasy taste it leaves in his mouth. After that, they wander around the arts and crafts stalls, enjoying the atmosphere. Baekhyun wants to put the next part of his plan into action right away, but he forces himself to wait patiently while Nari inspects some hand-wrought copper bracelets and chats to the artist about his style and inspiration.

“Come on, come and see this,” he says eventually, pulling her away towards the end of the stalls. This is really what he wants to show her, and when it comes into view, he’s not disappointed by her reaction.

“Wow! It’s so pretty,” she exclaims. A tunnel made of delicate glass lights shaped like wreathing flowers arches over the main path, and the green open spaces of the park on each side have been planted with thousands more, all lit up from inside and rotating colours, so that they’re surrounded by a multi-coloured sea of glowing flowers. Baekhyun takes her hand and they wander slowly through the flower tunnel. It’s magical in the cold air with the lights glowing all around them.

“Beautiful,” Nari whispers, her eyes reflecting the sparkling lights as she tips her head back to look overhead.

"You're more beautiful," Baekhyun tells her with a soft smile. She glances at him, then looks forward to the end of the tunnel, where the fields of flower-lights stretch out ahead, reflecting in the wide Han River, where they mingle with the rainbow bridge lights and those of the buildings on the northern bank. Here and there people are wandering among the flowers, and Baekhyun pulls Nari off the main path and onto one of the small winding pathways. Nari takes her hand out of his so that she can get out her phone. She takes a couple of photos of the scene, crouching down and tilting her phone expertly to get a good shot. She’s so artistic, even with a simple thing like a phone camera. Baekhyun thinks her Instagram is like a work of art.

“Go over there,” he says, pointing her into a small clearing surrounded by taller flowers. “I’ll take a photo of you.”

Nari steps over the flowers into the space and poses with the practiced confidence of a social media star, and Baekhyun's heart begins to pound. Excitement and nervousness mingle inside him, and his hands tremble with it, so much that he can hardly hold his phone still enough to take a good photo.

“Hurry up,” Nari calls. “This is pretty and all, but it’s freezing out here.”

“Okay, I got it,” he says, snapping several pictures at random – hopefully at least one of them won’t be blurry. Then he crouches down and pretends to look closer at one of the tulip-shaped flower lights. He quickly pulls something out of his pocket and drops it inside the tulip’s heart.

“Hey, come and look at this,” he calls to Nari. “There’s something different about this one.” He fights the ridiculously large grin threatening to split his face in two.

Nari picks her way back through the flower field. “Come on, let’s go,” she says without glancing at the tulip.

“Look at this flower first. There’s something special about it.”

“It’s just a flower light like all the others,” she argues. “I’m cold. Hurry up.”

“No, really, you need to see this,” Baekhyun insists. Nari sighs and gives in, stepping over and crouching down beside him to peer at the tulip.

He knows the exact instant she sees the ring. She goes still, staring into the tulip. The light of the flower is sparkling through the diamond, setting it glittering. Baekhyun can barely contain himself. With a shaking hand, he reaches in and picks it up, then takes her hand. Nari stands up suddenly and he stands up with her. Her eyes meet his, huge in her pale face.

“Baekhyun.” Her voice sounds hollow. “What are you –“

“Nari,” he says, and the smile he’s been fighting spills onto his face. “Ever since I first met you, I’ve known you were special, and every day is beautiful when you’re in it. You’re more precious to me than anything else in the world and I want to spend forever with you.” He slips the ring onto her finger. It fits perfectly. “Let’s get married.”

Nari looks down at her hand blankly.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Baekhyun asks. His excitement is bubbling over, splashing everywhere, and he’s barely able to stop himself bouncing around her like a hyperactive puppy. “It’s a lily, see, your favorite flower. I went to so many shops before I found it, you wouldn’t believe, I actually had to get two of my colleagues to help me out because I was literally losing my mind, but when I saw it I knew immediately it was yours, and it’s a unique design too, you like unique things so I knew -”

“Baekhyun!” She cuts him off abruptly. “Stop. Just - stop talking for a minute, okay?”

He stops talking obediently. She pulls her hands out of his and stares down at them, and he feels his smile slip a little. This isn’t how he’d pictured her reacting. He wants to ask her what’s the matter, but he forces himself to wait. She told him to stop talking, and he knows that means she needs him to be quiet while she gathers her thoughts.

Doubt slips in, like a cold, thin blade between his ribs. He suddenly remembers Jin advising him to discuss marriage with Nari before proposing. He’d been sure that Nari was ready, and that a surprise would be more fun, but perhaps Jin was right after all. Perhaps this was too big a thing to just spring on her.

Nari takes a deep breath and lets it out shakily. Baekhyun searches her face. “You like surprises,” he says, but it comes out more like a question, rising uncertain at the end.

“For God’s sake, Baekhyun.” She finally looks at him again, and it’s not a happy look at all. “Yes, I like surprises, but - marriage? Just out of the blue like this? We haven’t even talked about it!”

“But,” Baekhyun says. He feels like he's been suddenly blinded, groping around in the dark for reality as he thought he knew it. “But I thought –“

“I'm not going to marry you, Baekhyun,” Nari says. She takes the ring off her finger. Baekhyun stares blankly as she holds it out to him. He can’t process what’s happening. This isn’t how this goes. He can’t make his hand move to take it from her.

“Fuck,” she whispers, and somewhere in his blankness he’s surprised to hear her swear. He can count on one hand the amount of times over the six years they’ve been together that she’s sworn.

“I was going to talk to you soon,” Nari says, “but it’s been so hard to bring it up. I was scared of hurting you, but I should have done it sooner. I’m not in love with you anymore.”

“What?” The word falls from numb lips to shatter on the icy ground.

“I don’t love you anymore,” Nari repeats, and the words clang through him like he’s a bell-tower, all hollow and vibrating with the force of them.

“You don’t mean that,” he whispers.

“I do, Baekhyun. I do mean it. I was planning to break up with you soon.”

He cannot think. He has gone numb.

“Oh, Baekhyun," her voice breaks. "Please, don’t look at me like that." Tears well up in her eyes, and she presses the back of her hands to them and blinks hard to keep them from falling. “I’m hurting you. I knew I would, I knew this would happen, that’s why it was so hard to tell you...it was easier just to keep on going, but I shouldn't have. I was wrong. I'm sorry...”

“Why?” There’s a high-pitched ringing in his ears that distorts the sound of his voice. He feels floaty, lightheaded, the world trying to reel away from him in dark swirls and coloured blurs. “What did I do? I can fix it. Nari, please, give me another chance. I’ll do anything –"

She's shaking her head. “It’s nothing you did. I just don’t love you anymore. It’s gone, and there’s no bringing it back.”

“But –"

“Take this back,” she says. When he still can’t make his hand move, she takes his wrist, presses the ring into his palm, and closes his fingers over it. When she lets go of his wrist, his hand falls limply to his side. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have done this without hurting you. But I just can’t be with you anymore.”

“Don't,” he whispers. “Don’t say these things.”

She’s visibly pulling herself together. He can see her doing it. She’s always been more level-headed than him, always able to see things logically and bring reason to difficult situations. He knows her so well. He thought he knew every inch of her, inside and out. How could he not have seen this coming?

“Listen to me,” she says, and there's a distance to her voice that feels like it's cracking open his ribcage to get at his heart. “You need to understand what I’m telling you. We’re over. I’ve met someone else. I want freedom to explore a new relationship. You have to let me go.”

Someone else? The piercing tone in his ears grows louder. Someone else?

“You’re really leaving me?” His voice is thin and brittle, little more than a whisper.

“Yes,” she says. “I am sorry, Baekhyun, really. You’re a great guy, and you didn’t do anything wrong. You deserve someone who truly loves you, and that’s not me. Not anymore.”

There’s a long, long silence, and for the first time in his life, Baekhyun can’t find words to break it. She's sliced him open and scooped out all his substance, and there are no words left in him.

“I’m not going to go home – to your apartment, I mean,” she tells him eventually. “I’ll stay with my parents tonight. I’ll come get my stuff at the weekend. I know you’re working. You don’t have to see me if you don’t want to.”

He nods. She looks at him and bites her lip.

“Don’t drive until you’re sure you’re okay,” she tells him. He nods again. It’s all he can manage.

She hesitates a moment longer, makes the beginning of a gesture towards him, to pat his arm perhaps, or touch his shoulder, but her hand falls back to her side before the gesture is complete. Then she sets her shoulders. Resolutely she turns from him and walks away through the sea of glowing flowers. He watches her go until her petite frame disappears into the bustle of the market on the other side of the flower tunnel. Then she is gone.

Shock turns sour within him. Nausea surges, doubling him up, and he drops to his knees and throws up into the glowing flowers.

Soondae never sits well with him in the first place, and coming back up it’s so revolting that after the first heave he can’t stop. Tears pour down his face and his nose streams as he throws up repeatedly, unable to breathe, until all he’s bringing up is bile and his vision is going black. When it finally stops he’s on his hands and knees. He gasps for air, head spinning.

The first thought that comes to him is, _that is the last time I let Nari feed me soondae_. That thought is followed by the realisation, like a punch to the gut, that it was, indeed, the last time he’ll ever be fed soondae by Nari, or fed anything at all by Nari. He retches again, though there’s nothing left to bring up. The dry heaves feel like they’ll tear him apart.

 _Acute stress reaction._ His medical knowledge seeps up through his suffering, rote-learned words from long ago. _A parasympathetic reaction where the body releases acetylcholine, causing nausea and faintness._ He’s seen it in people who’ve just found out a loved one has unexpectedly died, in patients who can’t stand needles or the sight of blood. He’s not dying, no matter how much it feels like it.

“Hey, are you alright?” A woman has noticed him on hands and knees among the flowers.

“He’s drunk,” her companion tells her, a scornful ring to his voice as he tugs her away. Baekhyun wipes a shaking hand across his mouth. He starts to get up, but everything spins, so he stays on his knees and hangs his head. He breathes deeply, willing himself not to pass out. The doctor in him tells him he should lie down and elevate his feet, but he’s not about to do that here. He’ll be a lot more sympathetic to those patients who pass out at the sight of a needle after this, he thinks wretchedly. It’s horrible.

When he’s recovered a little, he becomes aware that his knees are freezing, the icy ground striking up through his jeans and making him shiver. The cold sweat all over his body isn’t helping. Eventually he manages to stagger to his feet and walk slowly in the direction of his car. The taste of ex-soondae and stomach acid is so strong it’s making him nauseous again, and he stops at the first stall and buys water. He rinses out his mouth and spits onto the ground. He daren’t swallow. He thinks he'll throw up anything that goes inside him, even water.

He makes it to his car and collapses into the driver’s seat. He’s so cold he’s shivering, but turning the key in the ignition so that the heater will work feels like a task so herculean he hasn’t a chance of doing it.

He rests his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. This is wrong. It’s all wrong. This isn’t what’s meant to happen. He never in his wildest dreams imagined this. The shock is so great that it makes him dizzy to think of it. He was sure of Nari. He was as sure of her as a flower is sure that the sun will rise. Now the sun has gone out, and it will never rise again, and how can Baekhyun live and grow without her? The world is black and empty now.

He should be crying, he thinks numbly. Shouldn’t he be crying? Wouldn't that be a normal thing to do right now? But Baekhyun is too bleak to cry. There’s nothing left in him to cry with.

An unknowable length of time later he manages to turn the car engine on. His hands are so cold he can barely grip the steering wheel, but the heater had been on when they drove here, and after a few minutes the car begins to warm up. It’s very late now, and it’s lucky the roads are quiet, because he can’t really focus on what he’s doing. He drives on autopilot, and autopilot gets him back to their apartment – no, _his_ apartment now, because Nari is leaving, will leave, has left. He doesn’t turn on any lights inside. He doesn’t take off his shoes or coat. He doesn’t go into their – no, _his_ bedroom. Instead he walks into the dark lounge, lies down on the couch, curls up on his side. He buries his face in his arms and closes his eyes.

He sleeps.


	8. November 19th

It feels like forever since Jongdae’s had a chance to hang out with his two best friends. They usually meet for lunch in the staff cafeteria, but the past two weeks have been crazy and their schedules have slipped out of sync. Even on the rare occasions Jongdae had time to actually go to the cafeteria, he's only managed to meet Chanyeol twice in the past couple of weeks, and Baekhyun not at all.

Jongdae doesn’t mind busy schedules, but he misses his friends and the laughter they bring to his day, so when he manages to finish his morning rounds and outpatients on time for once he sends a message to the group chat. He gets an immediate enthusiastic response complete with excessive exclamation marks from Chanyeol, but only a read notification from Baekhyun. Jongdae heads up to the staff cafeteria anyway, trusting that Baekhyun will come if he can.

When the elevator doors open on his floor, Chanyeol’s inside, leaning against the back wall and smiling down at his phone with just about the sappiest expression Jongdae has ever seen. He steps in beside the tall paediatrician and grabs his wrist to try and get a look at the screen.

“What is it? Puppies?”

Chanyeol jerks his phone away, clutching it to his chest to hide the screen.

“What?” Jongdae teases. “Was it something naughty?”

“Jongdae!” Jongdae’s grin fades, replaced by confusion and slight alarm. Chanyeol sounds angry, looks angry too. “Don't do that, what the hell?”

Jongdae is really taken aback. They play around all the time, and Chanyeol never reacts like this. “I just - you were smiling so hard I thought you must be looking at something cute…” he trails off. “You're right, it was rude of me. Sorry.”

He glances anxiously up at Chanyeol. He’s never had to tiptoe around him before.

Chanyeol sticks his phone in his pocket and passes a hand over his face, shoulders slumping. “Crap, sorry. I didn't mean to bite your head off.”

“I didn’t see what it was, if that helps,” Jongdae offers. Chanyeol gives an awkward laugh.

“Just a silly message from a friend.” He wraps a friendly arm around Jongdae’s shoulders, giving him a quick reassuring squeeze. “Seriously, I was out of line reacting like that. Forget it, yeah?”

Jongdae gives his friend a relieved smile and pushes the incident out of his mind.

The elevator doors slide open and they head towards the cafeteria, their usual banter restored. Chanyeol tells him a couple of jokes his little patients have told him, which Jongdae stores up in his mind to repeat to Chorong. She’s just gotten into jokes, and even the dumbest ones have her falling to the floor in fits of giggles. It’s so cute that Jongdae always tries to bring one or two new ones home to tell her.

They grab food from the self-serve line and sit down, and Jongdae checks his phone again. Still nothing from Baekhyun.

“I haven’t seen Baekhyun for ages,” he says. Chanyeol nods, swallowing his first mouthful of japchae.

“Me either. Maybe his surgical schedule is full.”

“We should get together sometime soon, outside of work,” Jongdae suggests, but Chanyeol has stopped paying attention, his eyes focusing into the distance over Jongdae's shoulder. He raises a long arm and waves.

“Baekhyun, over here!” Chanyeol's deep voice cuts easily through the general noise and chatter. Jongdae looks around, spotting Baekhyun immedately as he weaves his way through the tables towards them. He’s about to smile in welcome, but finds himself frowning slightly instead as he takes in his friend's appearance. Is it just the light in here, or does Baekhyun look sick?

Baekhyun drops wearily into the third chair at their table and Jongdae eyes him as unobtrusively as he can. Baekhyun is pale, and his face is definitely thinner than the last time Jongdae saw him, making his eyes look hollow and shadowed. He smiles at them, but it takes such obvious effort that it makes Jongdae more worried, not less. It’s not Baekhyun’s usual smile. There’s no light in it.

“You made it!” Chanyeol reaches out to clap Baekhyun’s shoulder. “I was wondering if you’d disappeared off the face of the planet.”

Baekhyun shrugs. “It’s been a busy week,” he says. Even his voice is dull.

“Baekhyun, are you okay?” Jongdae asks.

Baekhyun glances at him.

“Of course,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Jongdae hesitates. The way Baekhyun said it was almost challenging, and he doesn’t need a repeat of what happened with Chanyeol in the elevator.

Chaneyol slips into his hesitation. “You’re pretty pale,” he says. Jongdae feels a little relief that Chanyeol has seen something wrong too, it’s not just him. “Are you sick?”

“No," Baekhyun says. "I'm fine." He stabs his chopsticks into his noodles and lifts them towards his mouth, and Jongdae watches as a faint look of revulsion comes onto his face. He drops the noodles back into the bowl and takes a sip of water instead.

Jongdae exchanges a glance with Chanyeol. This is not what fine looks like. Especially not on Baekhyun.

“You’ve lost weight, haven't you?” he says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Baekhyun sighs heavily. “I told you, I'm fine. My stomach’s been a bit off lately, that’s all.”

Chanyeol grins. “'A bit off' is not a very accurate assessment, Dr. Byun. Have you forgotten your history-taking skills up there in the lofty world of plastics? Describe your symptoms,” he says. His tone is teasing, but Jongdae senses what he’s trying to do. By lightening the atmosphere, he might be able to get Baekhyun to open up.

“For God’s sake, it’s just stress, okay?” Baekhyun snaps. “Get off my back for once, would you?”

Silence. Chanyeol looks as stunned as Jongdae feels. It's so unlike Baekhyun that it's hard to process. Baekhyun stares moodily down at his untouched noodles, and Jongdae is sure now that Baekhyun is either sick and doing a not-very-good job of trying to hide it, or that something else is very wrong. He’s trying to decide on another angle that might get his friend’s guard down a little when his pager goes off, beeping loudly through the cafeteria and making every doctor within hearing range twitch.

“Mine,” he calls as he pulls it out. It’s the emergency department, and he sighs regretfully at his half-eaten lunch.

“Let’s catch up sometime soon when we’re not on call,” he tells his friends quickly. “I’ll message you guys later.”

Baekhyun doesn’t even look up. Jongdae sends a glance at Chanyeol, a small jerk of the head and raised eyebrows telling him to get something out of Baekhyun if he can. He’s never known Baekhyun to get sick, but if he’s the kind of person to act like a cranky kid when he’s in pain, a paediatrician is probably the best person to help him.

He jogs towards the elevator, dialing the extension for the ED on his cellphone. The resident picks up on the first ring.

“Min Jisook, female, age 22, arrived 15 minutes ago by private car, presenting with acute abdominal pain since eight am,” she recites. “Her boyfriend drove her here when she collapsed at home about an hour ago. She's haemodynamically unstable with hypotension and tachycardia.”

The symptoms are cause for immediate concern, especially in a young and otherwise healthy woman. "Is pregnancy confirmed?" Jongdae asks.

“Not yet. Her boyfriend says she’s not pregnant and she’s on her period, but I’m not convinced it’s menstrual bleeding. We’re waiting on the urine test now - ah, hold on -” The resident breaks off for a moment, and Jondgae hears the word “positive” in the distance. He’s jabbing the elevator button for the surgical suite even before the resident comes back on to relay the result.

“Do you want a pelvic CT?” the resident asks.

“No,” Jongdae says. "No time. It's an ectopic pregnancy, she'll arrest if we delay for imaging. Transfer her for emergency surgery.”

“I’ll arrange the transfer as soon as we get her stable,” the resident tells him. Jongdae confirms this and hangs up just as the elevator opens onto the surgical suite.

His team assemble over the next few minutes. The intern he first met in the NICU, Lee Kyungri, is on her second week of her obstetrics and gynaecology rotation. She'll observe and assist with simple tasks like holding tools and clamps, and the third year resident, Shin Nara, will assist Jongdae with the surgery itself. The theatre nurses are preparing the operating room as Jongdae and his team scrub in.

The anaesthesiologist, Dr. Bae, arrives at the same time as the patient. Min Jisook has been stabilized, at least temporarily, with two wide-bore IV lines of saline and hanging units of blood. A scrub nurse helps Jongdae gown and glove while Dr. Bae intubates the patient and the head theatre nurse directs her assistants in sterilizing the skin of the abdomen. As they go through the preparatory steps, Jongdae quickly briefs his staff on Jisook's condition and what he's about to do.

Jisook has a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Instead of travelling to the uterus where it can safely implant, a fertilized egg has implanted in the ovary or fallopian tube. Now, the embryo has grown big enough to rupture whatever part of the reproduction system it has implanted in. Without surgical intervention to remove the embryo and stop the bleeding, Jisook will die.

With no time to wait for a CT scan to tell him the location of the implanted embryo, Jongdae has to perform exploratory surgery to find the rupture. He takes the scalpel handed him by the nurse to his left and starts to incise. Once into the abdominal cavity, he discovers it’s filled with semi-coagulated blood. Just on sight there has to be at least a litre, probably more. It's too much. Two litres of blood loss is enough to kill a patient.

“Drain this,” he tells Nara, and orders six more units of blood. They need to replace the blood Jisook has already lost, and Jongdae needs to find the rupture and close it before she bleeds out.

“Uterus is normal,” he says aloud as he works. He moves towards the left fallopian tube and ovary. “Left tube normal....left ovary…” There it is. “Breach on the surface with an active bleeder.”

The rupture is big and messy, destroying nearly the whole surface of the ovary and bleeding freely. Jongdae starts to electrocauterize, but only seconds later Dr. Bae starts calling dropping blood pressure numbers and the monitor shows a run of ventricular tachycardia.

Shit, shit, shit, Jongdae thinks as he tries to cauterize more bleeding vessels. Usually he’s calm in theatre, but the sound of the monitor and the voice of the anaesthesiologist are bringing back the two patients he’s lost in the past couple of months. He cannot lose a third. He will not lose a third.

“I can’t stop the bleed, it's too messy. I'm going to remove the ovary,” he tells Nara across the table. The ovary has been destroyed by the rupture and it’s bleeding out of way too many places. He can’t control it, but if he removes the ovary he can control the bleed for the places he cuts.

The ophorectomy goes swiftly and routinely, and Jongdae starts to have hope. This is going to work. Min Jisook is going to be okay. He’s removed the ovary, controlled the bleeding and is working on cauterising the last few small vessels when Dr. Bae suddenly calls out the word he’s been dreading.

“Arrest!”

The ECG tracings start a chaotic gyration as the heart begins the quivering ventricular fibrillation that heralds an impending flatline. For a split second, Jongdae panics. His fingers go momentarily numb, and that's all it takes from him to lose grip on the electrocauterizer. The tool slips out of his numb fingers and clatters onto the floor at his feet.

Every head in the OR turns to stare. Dropping tools in the OR is a huge mistake, and rarely happens, because every movement is so practiced and carried out with such care.

It’s okay. It's okay. He doesn’t need the electrocauterizer any more anyway. There’s no resuscitation team in the surgical suite, so it’s all up to him this time. He snatches hold of his sanity and starts the resuscitation process. The head nurse hands him the prepped paddles of the defibrillator and he places them on Jisook's chest.

“200 joules," he says. "Shock.”

Jisook's body jerks with the electric pulse. Jongdae hands the paddles back, gets up onto the operating table on his knees so that he’s at the right angle for chest compressions, and starts CPR. Kyungri counts the seconds out loud for him. At two minutes the heart is still in v-fib. Jongdae takes the paddles back.

“360 joules. Shock.”

No change in rhythm. He does another two minutes of chest compressions, but there's still no change in rhythm.

Panic is creeping up on him. He pushes it back with gritted teeth. He must stay calm.

“1 mg epinephrine,” he orders. Nara injects the drug into the wide-bore IV line. Now they're into the resuscitation cycle: two minutes CPR; shock; add epinephrine; then CPR again, repeating the cycle until Jongdae is panting and his arms are shaking with the physical strain of performing compressions. He can't let this happen. The ophorectomy is done, he’s stopped the bleed, Jisook cannot die on him now. Kyungri is up on the other side of the table, ready to take over when he tires, but Jongdae can’t make himself stop. This has to work. He fixed her. Nara has nearly finished closing the abdominal incision with her neat, tidy stitches. Jisook will be fine.

He just has to get her heart going.

He’s on his sixth round of compressions when the tracing on the ECG monitor goes to asystole. This is one of the new monitors with technology that filters out compression artifact, so Jongdae can see the true rhythm of the heart - or lack of it - without having to pause CPR. The flat line runs dispassionately along the screen. Jongdae stares at it. He doesn't stop compressions. He stares desperately at the monitor, his whole body leaning into the compressions, silently begging it to stop showing him that awful flat line. There’s no use using the defibrillator any more. Asystole is unshockable, and it’s pretty much always the end.

He looks around for the anaesthesiologist sitting with her equipment at the head of the table. Usually Jongdae is very confident in his operating room procedures, but right now he feels like a first-year resident again, scared and unsure and desperately needing someone to tell him what to do, because there’s a 22-year-old girl dying under his hands and he can’t, he just can’t let a third patient die.

Dr. Bae meets his panicked gaze with a calm one.

“I’m looking at an asystolic rhythm after twelve minutes of resuscitation,” she says. Just hearing the words aloud helps clarify things in his mind.

“Continuing CPR,” he says.

He lets Kyungri take over compressions for two minutes, shaking out his aching arms and catching his breath. After that they rotate, two minutes each. When Nara finishes closing up she joins in, giving them a little longer to recover from each round. They keep going for another 20 minutes, but the asystole on the heart rate monitor does not change.

“Asystole for 20 minutes,” Dr. Bae says. "Resusciation in progress for 32 minutes total."

Jongdae is on compressions again, nearly mindless with exhaustion. He forces himself to think. He may want to deny what’s happening and keep doing CPR until he collapses, but that’s not how he should be handling this. That’s not what a surgeon should do. If this was happening while he was assisting a senior surgeon, what would he expect them to do?

The answer is horribly clear. Twelve minutes of v-fib followed by twenty of asystole? He’d expect them to stop. This patient is not coming back.

Jongdae lifts his hands off Jisook's chest and gets off the operating table. His whole body is aching. He checks the pupils, the carotid pulse. He asks the room if they object to him calling the code, gets silence on response. He looks one last time at the flatline tracing on the ECG monitor.

“Time of death," he says. "15:22.” His voice rings hollow around the quiet room.

He backs away from the table and leans against the wall. Nara takes Kyungri's arm and leads her out to de-scrub. The theatre nurses start to clean and prepare to transfer Jisook's body to the 6-hour room.

Jongdae has gone years without a table death, they’re so rare in his speciality. Now he's had three in less than three months. He feels distant, unreal, like this can't really be happening. He wants to pinch himself, but he's only too aware that he's not dreaming.

Surely something is wrong about this. Why does he keep losing patients? Why couldn’t he save this girl?

Dr. Bae has finished retrieving her intubation equipment. Instead of leaving, she comes over to stand in front of him.

“Dr. Kim? Are you alright?” They’re still wearing their surgical masks and caps, so he can’t see anything of her face except her eyes.

Jongdae tries to find an answer to that question. All he can come up with is, "I don't know."

“You did everything right,” Dr. Bae says. “The resuscitation effort was textbook. Did you see how much blood they drained? Two and a half litres out of the abdominal cavity. That was all before you got to her.”

Jongdae nods hollowly. It should help to hear that he did everything right, but somehow it doesn’t. If he did everything right, why wasn't the outcome better? If he did everything right, why did she die?

Dr. Bae pats his shoulder and leaves. Orderlies arrive to take out the body. The nurses finish counting their equipment and take it to be sterilized. When they’re all gone and he’s left alone, he slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the cold floor. He rests his elbows on his knees and lowers his head, bloody gloves dangling. He shuts his eyes. The monitor with the asystole line on it jumps into his mind's eye.

This isn’t why he became a doctor. He can't handle things like this.

But he has to handle it. He's the surgeon. He's in charge. He doesn't get to break down. He has to pull himself together.

He has to go and break the news to Jisook's family, and nothing’s going to get him out of that.

He forces himself to stand up, to take off his bloodied surgical scrubs and clean himself up. It’s not fair to keep them waiting like this.

Just get through the meeting, he tells himself as he scrubs his hands and arms as hard as he can with yellow antimicrobial soap. Just get through the meeting.

He walks down the hallway outside the operating room and through the double doors that lead to the family waiting area. A heavyset young man stands up when he calls for the family of Min Jisook. He’s her boyfriend, he tells Jongdae.

“Are there any other family members here?” Jongdae asks. He’d rather not repeat this if they’re nearby, but Nam Hodeok tells him her parents live in another city and won't arrive for hours.

"Okay. Would you come with me into the family meeting room so we can talk privately?" he asks, gesturing towards the closed door off the main corridor. There are a couple of other people scattered around the waiting area, not within earshot of a quiet conversation, but it's still better to do this kind of thing in private. Hodeok shakes his head and stands his ground. He looks both impatient and frustrated.

"Just get on with it," he snaps, and Jongdae can tell there's no point in arguing.

“Jisook had what’s called an ectopic pregnancy,” Jongdae begins, but Hodeok interrupts immediately.

“Bullshit. She wasn’t pregnant.”

Jongdae fights back a twinge of nervousness. Hodeok is much taller and broader than him, and he's glaring down at Jongdae, meaty fists clenching at his sides. He's suddenly grateful he's not alone in the family room with this man, after all.

“She may not have known it yet. She was probably less than six weeks along,” he explains. “But the emergency department did a test to confirm her pregnancy, and -”

“She said she had her period! How do you explain that, then?” Hodeok asks aggressively. All Jongdae's instincts are telling him to back away, but he can’t. He’s the surgeon, he’s supposed to be in control of the situation, and arguing about whether Jisook was or wasn’t pregnant is really pointless.

“She had already lost a lot of blood when she arrived, so we took her straight into emergency surgery,” he says, trying to get past the pregnancy issue. "Her heart stopped during the procedure. We did everything we could, but we couldn't get her heart started again." He swallows, using every shred of the willpower he has to stop his voice from shaking. "I am so sorry to have to tell you this. Jisook died in surgery.”

There’s a terrible silence. Then -

“Are you telling me Jisook is dead?” Hodeok’s face goes dark red, and his clenched fists start to rise from his sides. Now Jongdae does take a step back. He can’t help it.

"Yes," he says. "Jisook has died."

WHAM. A fist smashes into his left eye, knocking him so hard to the floor he's half-winded. Pain explodes through his face and head. He hears alarmed cries from other waiting families, the sound of running feet. He clasps his hand to his eye, seeing stars.

“You bastard!” Hodeok rages above him. “You killed her! She was fine this morning! You cut her open for nothing and killed her!”

Jongdae tries to scramble to his feet and is immediately shoved down again. Hodeok's hands wrap into his scrubs, hauling him up like he weighs nothing, and his heavy arm draws back to strike him again. Jongdae starts to struggle, but before things can go any further Hodeok is dragged off him. He staggers back and clutches the wall, gasping, as Hodeok is hauled backwards. Through the eye that’s not already swelling shut, he sees that a nurse from the post-anaesthesia care unit has gotten Hodeok’s arm twisted up behind his back.

“Security are on their way,” he calls to Jongdae as the man curses and struggles against the armlock.

Jongdae's whole head is throbbing. He feels like he should help the nurse, but he has no idea what to do. He's never gotten in a physical fight in his life and he'd probably just be in the way. Thankfully, it's only seconds before a pair of security guards run up and take over, pulling the ranting man away.

The nurse comes up to him and takes his arm.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Come out back, I’ll get a cold pack for your eye. Or do you want to go down to emergency?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jongdae says automatically. He’ll have a black eye for sure, but he doesn’t need the ED. He lets the nurse guide him into the tiny, almost cupboard-sized office behind the nursing station for the post-anaesthesia care unit - this apparently counts as “out back” here - and sits at the table, holding the cold pack over his throbbing eye. People react to bad news in many different ways, but he’s never actually been hit.

You killed her. Hodoek’s furious words echo in his mind. He knows they aren’t true, but all the same they seem to gnaw at his chest, at his bones. He puts his elbows on the small table and rests his forehead in the hand that’s not holding the cold pack, closing his eyes. He wishes there was a cold pack he could put on his emotions and make them go numb, too.

\---

Chanyeol had set his alarm earlier than usual last night, planning to wake up before his boyfriend and make a special breakfast. They don't always manage to eat together due to the unavoidable shift-work nature of their jobs, but today is a special day - their five-year anniversary - and worth making the extra effort for. Chanyeol generally sleeps with his phone under his pillow, where he's able to wake up to the vibration without disturbing Yeonseok if he gets called to the hospital overnight. The faint buzzing of the alarm beneath his ear goes off and he slides his hand under the pillow to turn it off before he's even really woken up. By the time he gets his eyes open, though, he finds a pair of soft brown eyes gazing at him across the pillow. Chanyeol smiles sleepily, and Yeonseok laughs.

“Good morning,” Yeonseok whispers. Chanyeol reaches out for his boyfriend and pulls him closer, and Yeonseok leans in to kiss him gently. The scent of his shampoo lingers in his hair.

“Morning,” Chanyeol mumbles when Yeonseok pulls back. He's still tired, and he’s never claimed to be a morning person, but he will gladly wake up earlier if it means a little more time with his boyfriend. Even though it should’ve been spent making breakfast. Yeonseok smiles and lets a hand run through Chanyeol’s hair before he moves a little closer and kisses him again. This time it's a little rougher, a little wilder. It takes a while for Chanyeol’s sleep-muddled brain to catch up, but when it does, he realizes where this is headed. He pulls back to raise an eyebrow at Yeonseok, who grins.

“We have time, don’t we?” he asks in a low, sultry whisper. Chanyeol drags his phone out from under his pillow and squints at the time. Then he drops it with a clatter onto the bedside table and rolls closer.

“Let’s do it.” He runs a hand down Yeonseok’s bare chest. Yeonseok responds by kissing Chanyeol again, rolling them over in bed.

They have to skip breakfast. By the time they get out of the apartment they’re both running late, Yeonseok’s uniform shirt buttoned wrong and Chanyeol’s coat flapping open as they run down the stairs to the parking garage. Just before they part to get into their respective cars, Yeonseok turns to Chanyeol and winks at him.

“See you later.”

Chanyeol feels slightly out of breath, and it's not from running down the stairs. His heart flutters, his face feels a little flushed, and he already can’t wait to get off work. He stares after Yeonseok for a few seconds until he remembers that he’s late as well.

Halfway to work, Chanyeol finds himself stuck in a traffic jam. There’s been an accident on Mapo bridge and two lanes are blocked.

“Only when you’re already late,” he groans, and calls the chief of paediatrics. Chief Jeong doesn’t sound very pleased when Chanyeol tells him he’s going to be at least 15 minutes late, but there’s nothing that can be done. He just hopes it won’t come back to bite him in the ass as overtime today. Any other day but today. The accident seems to take forever to clear and Chanyeol drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Too bad they don’t give those portable sirens to doctors as well as cops. Then he could have clipped it to his roof and zoomed his way through.

His phone chimes, the screen lighting up and showing him a notification from Yeonseok. Chanyeol is stuck in traffic anyway, so he might as well check it. Have a day as beautiful as you, his boyfriend has written, followed by three heart emojis. Chanyeol smiles as he traces his fingers over the hearts, his frustration at the traffic delay replaced by love and happiness.

He’s 20 minutes late by the time he finally makes it to work, and has to rush through the hospital to paediatrics with all the speed his long legs can provide him. The receptionist taps her watch at him and shakes her head, but he can tell by her smirk that she’s teasing. He clasps his hands.

“Yowon, I’ve done wrong. Can you ever forgive me?”

She just laughs at him. “Shall I hold back your first patient five minutes or so?”

“No, don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”

He starts whistling as he enters his office and quickly changes his winter jacket for his doctor’s coat. He has ten minutes before his first patient, not really enough time to prepare himself for the day ahead, but he can handle it.

He picks up his phone while his computer makes its usual complaints about logging into the clinical records system. His lock screen is the default one, but hidden in his photo folder is his favorite picture of Yeonseok from their vacation to Thailand a year ago. A small monkey sits on Yeonseok’s shoulder while he feeds it a bit of banana with a smile on his face. He looks so carefree, beautiful and happy in the photo and Chanyeol’s heart always skips a beat whenever he looks at it.

The clinical records system finally decides to let his computer talk to it, so he reluctantly puts his phone away and looks through the records for the first patient of today.

Three-year-old Maeng Chungho is carried into Chanyeol’s office by his father. The kid is still dressed in his dinosaur pajamas, his eyes are red and swollen with crying though he’s not actually in tears at the moment, and he whimpers whenever Chanyeol gets too close for comfort. He’s got all the classic signs of strep throat.

“Can you say ‘ah’?” he asks the small patient, but Chungho shakes his head. Chanyeol pouts comically. He’s used to kids behaving like this, and nothing can deter him today. “Oh, that's too bad. Can we make daddy say ‘ah’?”

Chungho’s face darkens and his lip begins to tremble. Apparently daddy can’t say ‘ah’ either. He’s obviously exhausted and annoyed with everything that’s going on. The quicker Chanyeol can get through the examination, the faster he can get Chungho home where he can get some sleep, but he can't prescribe penicillin without confirming strep throat.

“Oh, I’m soooo sleepy!” Chanyeol exclaims, and stretches his arms as he opens his mouth in a dramatic yawn. It works. Chungho catches the yawn, and Chanyeol stops immediately to cast a quick glance down his throat. His tonsils are red with small plaques of white, just like any normal strep throat. The last thing Chanyeol needs to do is to assess his lymph nodes for swelling. Chungho is not happy with Chanyeol’s gloved fingers on his throat. He starts crying and his father has to hold him tight to make sure he doesn’t squirm off his lap.

“It’s strep throat,” Chanyeol says to the father when Chungho’s crying dwindles to sobbing. The father nods and hands Chungho a little teddy bear they have brought from home. It soothes the child some more and he soon falls into silence, though is still very alert to Chanyeol's movements.

“Give him a teaspoon of penicillin syrup three times a day for seven days. If you miss a dose, don’t give him double the dose next time, just continue as planned. Make sure you keep giving it for the full seven days, even if he seems to be recovered earlier. The whole course is needed to make sure the infection is fully cleared up.”

Chungho’s father nods. “What about kindergarten?”

“Two days after you’ve started treatment he won’t be infectious anymore, so if his fever lowers and he seems to have enough energy, there’s no reason he can’t attend kindergarten.”

The father thanks him and Chanyeol gives Chungmo one of the smiley-faced “I was good for the doctor today” stickers he always keeps on hand, eliciting the first smile he’s seen from the little boy. Chanyeol sends them away with a prescription for penicillin and a wave goodbye.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and when he checks it, a picture of an adorably smiling police officer giving the camera a finger heart shows up. Chanyeol isn’t sure how he manages not to completely overflow with happiness.

It’s always like this on their anniversaries. On normal days, when his normal routine dominates, he often forgets that he’s living a kind of secret double life. He puts his love for Yeonseok away while he's at work and assumes his socially-acceptable persona. He's still himself - just a version of himself who doesn't have a partner, and _definitely_ doesn't have feelings for another man. Twenty years of hiding his sexuality makes it automatic.

But on special days like this, his love is so overwhelming that it breaks through. It makes him realize just how much he wishes he could combine his boyfriend with the world and not care about anything else. But he can’t. It’s so much safer to hide. He can't risk losing the people he loves.

He looks at the photo again and smiles. He can allow himself to send photos and dumb little text messages to Yeonseok today. Nobody's going to know. He turns on the camera and sends a picture of himself with his face so close to the camera that his eyes go the size of saucers and he looks like an alien. Moments later, he gets a laughing emoji and a heart in return.

At lunchtime, he heads towards the cafeteria to meet Jongdae and hopefully Baekhyun. As he’s taking the elevator up, he realizes how much he’s missed his friends in the past couple of weeks. He should have called them before it became this long and worked out a time they can all catch up properly, but life is always so busy. The elevator stops on the obstetrics and gynaecology floor and the doors start to slide open, but he barely notices, distracted by another message from Yeonseok. _How is it only lunchtime? I miss you already, baby._

A split second later, panic runs cold through his veins as Jongdae grabs his wrist and tries to read what’s on his phone. Fear leaps up and grabs him by the throat, and he snatches his phone away.

“Jongdae!" Panic makes his voice sharp. "Don't do that, what the hell?" His heart is hammering. What if Jongdae saw the messages and the earlier photo that was still visible on the screen? How is he going to explain it?

He glances warily at his friend, but Jongdae just looks startled and a little alarmed, and Chanyeol realises how badly he just over-reacted. He pockets his phone and rubs his hand over his face, trying to calm himself down.

“Crap, sorry,” he says, feeling terrible for the way Jongdae is apologising as if he'd done something wrong, when it's Chanyeol who's acting like an asshole. "I didn't mean to bite your head off."

When Jongdae says he didn’t see the screen, Chanyeol feels like he could almost pass out with relief. He’s so grateful to have been spared that he wraps his arm around Jongdae’s shoulders, and it doesn’t take long before they’re discussing how long it’s been since they last saw each other and competing playfully over who’s had the busier schedule. Jongdae doesn’t ask questions or try to force information out of him, and he gives silent thanks that his friend is willing to forget his bad reaction. He'll have to be more careful today. His happiness is overriding his usual protective habits. Checking his phone in a public elevator was really asking for trouble.

When Baekhyun joins them a little later, Chanyeol immediately forgets the incident in the elevator, because Baekhyun looks awful. When he tries to find out what’s wrong, though, Baekhyun just snaps at him. Chanyeol backs off, but his worry only increases.

Jongdae is paged to an emergency halfway through lunch, but Chanyeol wishes he could have stayed. Sitting alone with a moody Baekhyun, who insists he’s fine but is obviously anything but, is not a whole lot of fun. Chanyeol’s instinct is to joke around with him and try to cheer him up, but his first attempt backfired and he doesn't want to drive Baekhyun away.

After the silence has dragged on too long, Chanyeol tries again. “Come on, Baekhyun," he says, as gently and non-threateningly as he knows how. He feels oddly like he's talking to one of his child patients, who are sometimes too scared of the hospital or of their own pain to speak. "I know something's up. You can tell me anything, you know that, right?”

He sees a brief flash of some emotion he can't identify cross Baekhyun’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. His best friend just shrugs and hides his eyes behind his fringe, and there’s another long silence between them. Finally the silence is broken when Chanyeol’s phone chimes with another message. It's been going off intermittently all through lunch, and Baekhyun seems to latch on to it in an attempt to steer the conversation away from himself.

“Who’s texting you so much?”

Chanyeol is forced to think up a hasty excuse. He tells Baekhyun that it's his sister, Yoora. It gives him a conversation idea - and it just feels so wrong, that he has to scramble for conversation ideas with Baekhyun, of all people - and he starts talking about how he went ice skating with Yoora last weekend. Baekhyun’s interest seems rather forced, but Chanyeol can tell that he’s trying. When that subject dries up, he tells his friend about the six-year-old girl he saw this morning, who would only let Chaneyol examine her ears if he let her use the otoscope to examine his first. She had carefully peered down his ear, and then explained to him gravely that he had a “very long worm” living in the tunnel between his ears and she’d have to do brain surgery to get it out. He’s sure this will at least get a smile, but Baekhyun just plays listlessly with his noodles, never raising his head high enough to give Chaneyol a good look at his eyes.

Chanyeol has barely finished talking when Baekhyun gets up, noodles untouched, and mumbles something about needing to be in surgery. Chanyeol jumps up from his chair to grab hold of Baekhyun’s arm before he can leave.

“Listen, if you need to talk, you know where to find me. Whatever it is, you don't have to do it alone.” He wills Baekhyun to hear the sincerity in his voice, but Baekhyun just pulls his arm away without a word. Chanyeol watches him go unhappily, rubbing his head as an ache starts up between his temples. He gets a glass of water and drinks the whole thing in one go, hoping to stave off the headache if it's dehydration. Being unable to reach his best friend really sucks, and he doesn't need a sore head through the afternoon on top of it.

A couple of hours later, Chanyeol's headache is worse. He has just waved goodbye to a patient, so he takes a minute to assess himself. He’d been distracted by focusing on his patients, but now he becomes aware that in addition to his head, his throat feels dry and his bones are aching. The headache is worsening even as he sits there, and Chanyeol leans back in his office chair and closes his eyes. He feels terrible. Has he caught a cold? How the hell did it come on so quickly?

There's a knock on his door, but Chanyeol hasn’t opened his eyes, so he doesn’t know who until the receptionist speaks.

“Dr. Park, I have… Are you okay? You don’t look too good,” Yowon says. Chanyeol shivers, and at the same moment a bead of sweat slips down his neck.

“I think I have a fever,” he says, eyes still closed. He hears Yowon’s footsteps come closer, and then a cold hand is pressed onto his forehead. Chanyeol sighs in relief at the coolness against his aching head.

“You’re burning up! Go home, Dr. Park. You can’t stay at work with a fever like this. How did you get to work?” she asks. Chanyeol nearly whimpers when she removes her hand.

“I drove here,” he says, forcing himself to open his eyes and squint up at her. The light makes his headache even worse.

“I’ll tell Chief Jeong I sent you home on sick leave. And you are not driving with a fever like that, I’ll call a cab for you.”

Chanyeol groans. He can’t be sick today. Of all the days in a year, why does it have to be the one where he plans to cuddle his boyfriend all evening and make love to him all night long. Of course, illness doesn’t care about anniversaries, and Chanyeol’s fever only makes him feel worse. He closes his eyes again while Yowon goes to call the cab and slumps over his desk, pillowing his head on his arms.

“The cab is here, Dr. Park. Let me help you.” Yowon is back. She drags Chanyeol up from his chair, helps him change into his own coat, and lets him lean on her all the way down to ground level. It must look ridiculous, he’s so much taller than her, but he’s feeling too terrible to care. The outside air is so cold against his hot body that he shudders uncontrollably. He clenches his teeth to stop them from chattering as Yowon leads him to the cab and pushes him into the back. On the ride home, the cheerful cab driver talks about his life very enthusiastically. Chanyeol is freezing despite asking him to turn the heating right up. He huddles inside his coat and wants nothing more than to cease to exist. He hopes it’s not influenza, but it sure feels worse than a simple cold.

The cab driver helps him up the stairs and watches him stagger into his apartment. By this time, Chanyeol is boiling, hair damp with sweat. He sheds his coat, jersey and shirt right there in the hallway and walks half-naked into the living room. He collapses onto the couch and immediately regrets the loss of his clothing because now he's bloody freezing. He drags the blanket off the back of the couch, huddles into it, and falls into a feverish doze.

He wakes up when the front door slams shut. He looks around, squinting and confused for a few moments about where he is.

“Baby, you’re already home?” he hears Yeonseok call from the hallway, but he doesn’t have the energy to answer. Yeonseok enters the living room moments later and finds Chanyeol lying shirtless and sweating on the couch, with the blanket haphazardly kicked to the floor.

“Oh boy.” Yeonseok sits down beside him on the couch, puts a hand on his forehead, and whistles. “I’ll go get the thermometer.” He leans down to kiss Chanyeol’s forehead, and Chanyeol wishes he would stay and go simultaneously. Everything hurts, but everything is also better with Yeonseok there.

The thermometer reads 40 degrees. Chanyeol whines when Yeonseok reads out the number. No wonder he feels like shit with a fever of 40 degrees. How did he even get a fever that high?

“Should I call someone?” Yeonseok asks.

"No," Chanyeol mumbles. A fever of 40 is high and definitely should be treated if long-lasting, but Chanyeol is an adult and otherwise healthy, he'll be okay if it doesn't get much worse. “It’s probably just a bug or someth…oh. Shit.”

"What?" Yeonseok is stroking his sweaty hair off his forehead with a cool hand. It feels amazing, but Chanyeol has just remembered that he saw a child last week whom he diagnosed with measles. It was a mistake that Chanyeol even saw the kid - he’s not supposed to see measles cases because he hasn’t been vaccinated - but the child hadn’t been showing a rash when he’d presented and the triage nurse hadn’t picked up on it. Chanyeol had been sure he would be fine, sure he hadn’t been in close contact with the kid for long enough for the virus to spread, but the symptoms he’s feeling now fit the measles pattern exactly. Stupid hyper-contagious disease.

“Honey, are there white spots in my mouth?” Chanyeol opens his mouth as wide as he can. Yeonseok stares at him for a few seconds.

“I’m a police officer, Chanyeol. You’re the doctor.”

Chanyeol just waves a hand around weakly, mouth still open, and Yeonseok leans a little closer to peer inside his mouth.

“There are white spots inside your cheeks.”

Chanyeol groans and lets a hand fall over his eyes. He’s got measles. He’s caught a kid’s disease as a 32-year-old, and it’s always worse in adults. It’ll probably destroy him. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get pneumonia.

“It's measles,” he murmurs unintelligibly. It’s a good thing Yeonseok has already had it. Chanyeol has seen the embarrassing childhood photos.

“What?”

“Measles, okay! I have measles!”

Yeonseok snorts with laughter. Chanyeol whines and tries to punch him but is so weak that Yeonseok easily catches his fist. He kisses it, then leans down to kiss Chanyeol’s cheek too. 

“Sorry, babe. I'll get you a glass of water, okay? You'll need to stay hydrated, I know that much.” He puts the blanket back on top of Chanyeol and tucks it around him.

“Hmm,” Chanyeol closes his eyes again. He loses the next few minutes in feverish shivers until Yeonseok comes back with the water and helps him sit up so he can drink safely.

“Happy anniversary, darling," Yeonseok says. "Here’s to many more years.” He hands Chanyeol the glass of water with a ceremonial flourish.

“I love you,” Chanyeol says blurrily, and Yeonseok sends him a soft smile.

“I love you too. Now let’s get you better.”

Chanyeol nods, but he knows getting better is going to take a while. He can only hope he hasn’t infected any of the patients he’s seen in the last week. He regrets their anniversary will end like this, but right now he has no ability to do romantic things. His phone chimes, and Yeonseok pulls it from his pants pocket without hesitation and reads the message.

“Jongdae is asking if you have time for him.”

Chanyeol nods vaguely. Everything is going fuzzy and strange, and it’s getting hard to connect his thoughts together. “If he hasn’t had measles, he has to stay away, otherwise he can come over and laugh at me dying.”

Yeonseok chuckles and answers the text message. Then he leans down to intertwine their fingers and press a kiss to his forehead. Chanyeol closes his eyes and falls asleep.

\---

  
By the time Jongdae’s shift is over, thankfully with no more emergency summons to the ED, he can’t see out of his left eye despite the repeated application of cold packs and a couple of NSAIDs one of the ob-gyn nurses found for him. The staff changing room on the basement level is colder than the rest of the hospital, and Jongdae shivers a little in his thin scrubs as he inspects his face in the mirror. He’s never had a black eye before. There’s a dark blue-black streak all the way along his left cheekbone, and it’s spread a little over the bridge of his nose too. A more pinkish-red colour spreads across his swollen eyelids. It looks just as painful as it feels.

He slips his scrubs off, buttons up his shirt, and then, carefully and painfully, eases his sweater over his head. Even slightly brushing his eye with the fabric makes it throb in time with his pulse. The sweater safely on, he gets his backpack from his locker, the new, fancy leather one that Baekhyun gave him for his birthday as a replacement for the one he got thrown out. It reminds him of Baekhyun's uncharacteristic behaviour at lunchtime, and how unwell he'd looked. He doesn't even realise his eyebrows are starting to pinch in worry until the movement of his facial muscles tugs painfully on his bruised eye.

He winces and turns back to the mirror. His reflection stares back at him sadly. He can’t bring a mood like this home. He needs to talk through what happened in the OR today. He’s not the kind of person who can internalize his pain, but he doesn’t want to burden Ahreum with it either. His wife already worries about him working too hard and she's going to freak out when she sees his bruised face. If she knows he’s losing patients and losing his confidence along with them, she’ll worry even more.

Maybe he'll go hang out with Chanyeol. Chanyeol will understand his work problem, and hopefully he’ll have managed to get whatever’s wrong with Baekhyun out of him too, and ease Jongdae’s mind on that account. He wanders out of the changing room, tapping a quick message to Chanyeol as he heads towards the front doors. _Have time to hang out tonight?_

He sends it and hovers just inside the main entrance, where he receives noises of sympathy from several arriving night shift nurses on account of his eye. His phone chimes a minute later and he peers through his single good eye at the message.

_He has measles. He says you can come over if you’ve had it. You can help me clean up when he dies ;)_

Jongdae stares at the message, wondeirng who sent it. Chanyeol has measles? He looked fine at lunchtime.

 _I've had it. Need me to bring anything?_

_How about his car?_

Jongdae gives up on having this conversation by message and calls Chanyeol’s phone instead. It’s picked up by a man with a clear, light voice.

“Chanyeol’s phone.”

“Hi,” Jongdae says. “I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you?”

“I’m...” A short pause. “I’m a friend. Chanyeol came home in a taxi because he was too feverish to drive. You’re at the hospital, right? Would it be a pain for you to drive his car over? His keys should be in his office, top drawer of his desk.”

“No problem,” Jongdae says. “I took the subway here anyway."

He hangs up and heads back up to paediatrics. It’s a matter of minutes to find the keys, just where Chanyeol’s friend said they’d be. Once in the parking basement, he wanders around pressing the unlocking button until a car’s headlights flash and the doors unlock. He gets into Chanyeol’s car, has to move the seat several settings forward because Chanyeol has pointlessly long legs, and is about to start the engine when his attention is caught by a wallet-sized photo frame clipped to the interior just below the radio. In the photo is a beaming Chanyeol, both arms wrapped around a slightly smaller man Jongdae doesn’t know, who is gazing up at him with an expression Jongdae can only describe as loving.

Who is that? Jongdae keeps glancing at the photo as he starts the car and navigates out of the basement. The photo is obviously recent, and the look in the eyes of both men makes him pretty sure he knows the answer. For the first time since he’d got the call at lunchtime, a slight smile touches his lips. He hopes his suspicion is right. It would certainly make this awful day a lot better.

He arrives at Chanyeol’s apartment block and parks in the space numbered with the correct apartment number. Then he takes the elevator up to the fifth floor and walks along a well-maintained corridor to apartment 5-6. The door is opened at his knock, and he’s met by a man he immediately recognizes as the one from the photo. He’s about Jongdae’s height, perhaps a few years older, with cropped black hair and a strong, handsome face. The man smiles warmly at him and a hand is held out to shake.

“I’m Kim Yeonseok,” he says. Jongdae takes his hand and smiles back, taking an immediate liking to the man. There’s something so easy and confident about his manner that it puts Jongdae at ease straight away.

“Kim Jongdae,” he replies. He’s shown inside, takes off his shoes and places them on a rack that holds several pairs in Chanyeol’s giant size, and several more in a smaller size closer to Jongdae’s own. It tells him Kim Yeonseok lives here, and he’s only more convinced that he’s right.

“What happened to your eye?” Yeonseok asks him as they walk down a clean, brightly-lit corridor towards a lounge area. “Looks like a pretty nasty bruise.”

“I got hit,” Jongdae gives a small laugh. “Angry relative of a patient.”

“Really?” Yeonseok pauses and looks at him with obvious concern. “I didn’t think being a doctor was so dangerous.”

“It’s not usually,” Jongdae assures him. “Especially not in paediatrics.”

Yeonseok grins at him knowingly, and Jongdae grins back.

“You said Chanyeol has measles?” he asks. “He seemed fine at lunchtime.”

“That’s what he told me.” Yeonseok shrugs. “I’m not a doctor, but I assume he knows what he’s talking about. Look at him.”

He gestures towards the couch, and Jondgae steps far enough into the room to lay eyes on Chanyeol. It’s a far cry from the cheerful face he’d seen at lunchtime. Chanyeol’s long body is sprawled on the couch, face flushed, hair sweaty and eyes closed. He’s muttering in fitful sleep and a blanket is tangled and half-thrown off his bare torso. Jongdae spies a red rash already appearing across his chest, and gives a sigh that’s half amusement, half concern. Yeonseok shakes his head at the sight of the blanket and goes over to tuck it carefully back around him.

“Well, it sure looks like measles to me,” Jongdae admits. He comes over and feels Chanyeol’s forehead and his eyes widen. “That’s a fever and a half. Did you take his temperature?”

“About 20 minutes ago. It was 40 degrees,” Yeonseok says. “Should I be worried? He said he didn’t need a doctor, but…”

“It’ll be okay if it doesn’t last too long,” Jongdae says. “You’ll need to keep him hydrated though. He’s sweating a lot.”

“He drank a glass of water before.”

Jongdae nods. It’s clear to him that Chanyeol is not going to be the listening ear he’d come in search of, but that’s okay. Chanyeol needs looking after more than he does right now. He sits down on the couch and gently opens Chanyeol’s mouth, where he finds the white spots within that confirm the measles diagnosis.

“Poor guy,” he says. “You’re going to be sick for a while.”

Chanyeol moves his head and opens his eyes. He stares up at Jongdae and a frown comes onto his face.

“Jongdae,” he says weakly. “What happened to your face?”

“I got hit,” Jongdae is forced to admit for the second time. “Angry relative.”

“That’s bad.” Chanyeol makes a feeble motion with his arm, and his fingers latch onto Yeonseok’s sleeve. “Sweetheart, did you hear that? My friend got hit. Go arrest them. Arrest the bad guys.”

Jongdae has to hold back a grin. He’s just found out Chanyeol is adorable when he’s sick.

“It’s okay,” he reassures Chanyeol. “Nobody has to get arrested. It’s just a black eye.”

“Nooo,” Chanyeol whines. “Didn’t you know my boyfriend is a cop? He’s even got a gun. And handcuffs.” A glint comes into his eye and he starts to sit up a little. “Go get your handcuffs. I wanna show Jongdae what you can do with -”

Yeonseok claps a gentle hand over Chanyeol’s mouth and pushes him back down. “Go back to sleep, idiot,” he says fondly.

“But I’m hot,” Chanyeol whines.

“I know you are,” Yeonseok says sympathetically, stroking his hair. Jongdae gets up and goes into the kitchen to find a clean towel and soaks it in cold water. By the time he’s back, Chanyeol’s asleep again, and he passes the towel to Yeonseok to place on Chanyeol’s forehead.

“Are you sure he’s alright?” Yeonseok asks him. There’s real worry in his eyes, and Jongdae hastens to reassure him.

“High fevers are common in measles. He’s fine at the moment, but keep an eye on him. If it gets any higher or lasts longer than 24 hours, it’d be best to get him checked up in case he develops a complication.”

“Can I call you if anything happens?”

Jongdae agrees immediately. Of course he’ll help out Chanyeol and his boyfriend when he needs it. Infectious diseases are not his area of expertise, but he’ll be able to identify pneumonia or encephalitis should Chanyeol develop either of them and need to be hospitalised. It’s unlikely, though, and he’s not particularly worried.

“Have you eaten?” Yeonseok asks him, and when Jongdae shakes his head he smiles and invites him to stay for dinner. “I was preparing to cook anyway, but he’s not going to be eating in that condition. Let’s not waste it.”

“What’s all this in aid of?” Jongdae wonders, eyeing the expensive ingredients Yeonseok is getting out. “Or do you eat like this all the time?”

Yeonseok smiles softly. “It’s our five-year anniversary,” he says. “Chanyeol was so excited. It’s such a shame he managed to get sick.”

“Congratulations,” Jongdae smiles, and the happiness shining in Yeonseok’s eyes says just how much he loves his friend.

Over dinner they get to know each other, Yeonseok explaining that he really is a police officer, it’s not just Chanyeol’s delirious brain talking, and Jondgae telling his new friend all about his wife and three beautiful children.

“How long have you known Chanyeol?” Yeonseok asks.

“Since medical school. We specialized differently but we ended up working in the same hospital, so we’ve stayed close.”

“I’m glad he has a friend like you,” Yeonseok says. “You didn’t know before you came over, did you, that he has a boyfriend?”

Jongdae shakes his head, and Yeonseok smiles a little sadly. “I thought not. I’m sure he was too feverish to realise what he’s done by inviting you over. He’s terrified of being rejected. I keep telling him he’s perfect and people who matter will accept him for who he is, but he won’t believe me. Not even his parents know he’s gay, only his sister. It’s starting to worry me.”

Jongdae is saddened to hear this. The fear of rejection must be pretty strong, but when he thinks about Chanyeol’s personality it makes sense. He’s such a loving person that rejection by someone he cares about would hurt him immensely.

Yeonseok’s eyes brighten a little. “I never thought I’d say measles was a good thing, but I think this could actually help. Maybe once he realises you haven’t rejected him, he’ll be more willing to try opening up to other people.”

“I hope so,” Jongdae agrees. “I have no problem with it, and Chanyeol is one of my best friends. I’d never turn my back on him.”

They move on to talk about other things. Jongdae doesn’t bring up his patient deaths, although they're still playing on his mind. It’s not something to talk about with a man he’s only just met, even if they get on so easily straight away, but despite the fact he didn’t get to share his worries his heart still feels a little easier. He’s happy Chanyeol has someone to share his life with, and hopes that Yeonseok is right and that Jongdae knowing will help Chanyeol get over a little of his fear. He can push his own troubles aside for one more night.


	9. November 30th

Yixing stares at the patient journal in front of him. He has read it and read it again and he still can't make the information his colleague has entered sink in. Nurses walk around him, moving to and from patients that require their help, but for Yixing, the world has just ground to a sudden and painful stop.

He exhales shakily and shadows his eyes with his hand. He wants Songmi. He wants her soft arms wrapped around him, wants her head laid against his chest, wants her mere presence soothing the fresh wound that’s just been torn in his heart. But his wife isn’t working today, so he can’t take a break to go find her in the emergency department and tell her that he knows it’s stupid, but he just doesn’t think he can do this anymore.

He looks back at the journal and lets his eyes run again over the last note written by his colleague.

_Chemotherapy stopped after dose 6 when control CT came back with massive progression. Patient has had multiple neutropenic fevers over the course of the last few months and shows signs of multiple organ failure. The palliative care phase has been initiated and the patient has been admitted to hospice. Parent and patient are informed and have agreed to proceed._

Yixing finds the last CT scans in the computer system and looks at them. Sooyoung’s entire skeleton is riddled with cancer. Her abdomen shows widespread metastatic disease, and he sees where the secondary bone cancer has eaten away at her hips. They could break at a mere knock at this stage, but there’s no point in prophylactically pinning them now. This is as bad as cancer gets, and the fact that he knew it was coming does not make it any easier to see.

Yixing closes his eyes against the horrific CT scans and remembers a smiling, athletic 15-year-old walking into his office. She had told him that her hip has been sore, but maybe she’s been training too hard for the upcoming inter-high school track meet, and does he think she’ll be able to run in the 400 meters if she does everything he tells her? She had been so full of life, so ready to tackle her disease, unwilling to consider the fact that she might lose. She’d taken every restriction he’d inflicted on her once-active life like a trooper, never letting it get her down for more than a few moments, always finding a bright side or a way around it. Now, he doesn’t want to think about what she looks like. Not even Sooyoung can find her way out of this.

He knew this was coming, but he hadn’t expected it quite so soon. Sooyoung’s disease has progressed fast over the last couple of months. She’s had infection after infection, never able to fully recover, and he was forced to delay her chemotherapy sessions because she simply was not strong enough to tolerate the treatment. Now her body has lost the fight. All they can do now is make sure her last few weeks will be as painless as possible.

An unwanted vision of her emaciated body lying in a hospice bed, sleeping her last days away as every part of her body gives up on her, slips into his mind. He turns away from the journal, breathing deeply to try and hold back the tears forcing their way into his eyes. He can cry when he gets home. Not here, not now.

It’s on days like this that he wonders what he’s doing. There are many forms of cancer that he can and does treat successfully, but things like this make him wish he’d gone into research instead of practice. He just hadn’t known he would find it so difficult to not get attached. His quietly confident younger self hadn’t realized how terrible a blow it would be to lose someone he'd devoted years to saving.

Sooyoung will die, and Yixing will grieve. He will promise himself never to let himself care about a patient again. And in time, he’ll meet another patient who tugs on his heartstrings, who makes him care too much despite all he can do to distance himself. He’ll promise himself he’ll do everything, anything he can to save them, and that this time it will really work - and all his promises will turn to dust and ashes in his hands. The cycle goes around and around, and it’s so hard, and he’s so tired.

He sighs and steps out from behind the ward station only to have the second-year resident Ryeo Minhee almost run straight into his chest. She stops just in time and hugs her clipboard convulsively, her ponytail bobbing.

“Dr. Zhang! I was looking for you everywhere,” she says, a relieved smile on her face as she looks up at him. Yixing takes a step back to open a little distance between them and tries to smile back. He’s not sure he succeeds.

“How can I help?”

Minhee hands him her clipboard. Yixing looks down and reads the name Lee Jungsu on the chart.

“Mr. Lee just got diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer, but he refuses to accept his diagnosis and doesn’t want surgery. It’s operable and could save his life, but he’s worried it will mutilate his appearance. I don’t know what to do anymore. He won’t listen to anything I say - he just calls me “silly little girl” and tells me to go back to kindergarten. Will you talk to him?”

Yixing nods and pats her shoulder reassuringly. Minhee is 27 years old and a competent doctor, but her round, childlike face works against her when it comes to convincing older patients that she knows what she’s talking about.

“I’ll talk to him,” he says. “But if the patient refuses treatment and we’ve done everything we can to inform them of their choices, we can’t do much else. Remember that.”

Minhee nods and thanks him, then leaves when a nurse calls for her. Yixing stands there in the hallway with the clipboard in his hands, gathering the scattered threads of his day and attempting to pull them together. He taps the clipboard a few times against his hand, then walks off to find Mr. Lee.

When he turns the corner he hears raised voices, which only get louder and angrier as he approaches room 314. A nurse hovering outside the room grimaces in his direction as he comes close. Yixing steps into the doorway and takes in the scene in front of him.

“So leave me, woman! I’m not going to quit smoking and you’re just in my way. It’s not like you care anyway,” Mr. Lee shouts at a woman of around the same age as him. Yixing assumes she's his wife.

“Just because you’re an asshole doesn’t mean I don’t love you! Why do you have to do this to me?” Mrs. Lee screams back. It’s deafening. Yixing wants to back straight out again, dump the chart on the other attending oncologist's desk for her to deal with when she comes on shift this evening, and pretend he was never here. He hates conflict. He finds angry voices painful, even when they’re not directed at him, and he’s more sensitive than usual today. But he can’t. The nurses need him, his juniors trust him. He’s in charge, and he has to deal with this, like it or not.

He tries clearing his throat but the shouting match continues and neither of them notices him. He tries again, louder this time, but it still has no result. When Mrs. Lee lifts her hand as if to hit her husband in the bed, Yixing surges forward and catches her wrist.

“Enough!” he shouts. Both of them stop yelling and look at him in surprise. Yixing lets go of Mrs. Lee’s wrist. He feels shaken by having had to raise his voice. He takes a deep breath, summons up a vague, polite smile, and fixes it on his face.

“Good morning,” he says. "I'm Dr. Zhang, the attending doctor on your case.”

Mr. Lee glares at his wife. “Did you send another fucking doctor to talk to me?” Mrs. Lee huffs loudly and opens her mouth to retort. Yixing holds up a hand.

“Please,” he says, unable to help the note of distress in his voice. He can’t handle another screaming match, not today. He looks at Mrs. Lee. “Would you kindly step out of the room for a few minutes, Mrs. Lee?” He can tell she’s forming protests, so he continues quickly. “Nurse Choi," he calls towards the door, and the nurse who was hovering outside steps in. "Will you please show Mrs. Lee to the waiting area? I’m sure she would appreciate a nice cup of tea or coffee while I talk to Mr. Lee. Thank you.”

He doesn’t leave any space for argument. Nurse Choi gently takes Mrs. Lee’s arm and guides her out. The door closes behind them and the room is suddenly, blessedly quiet. Yixing takes a steadying breath and turns back to Mr. Lee.

“I believe my colleague, Dr. Ryeo, who was here earlier, explained your diagnosis of oropharyngeal cancer,” he starts, but Mr. Lee interrupts him.

“I don’t believe a word of it. What does some kid like her know? I don’t have cancer and I’m not getting surgery.” Mr. Lee crosses his arms and glares at Yixing.

Yixing lowers his gaze to the clipboard. “The biopsy results here show me that you have a tumour in your throat,” he says mildly. He tends to go distant and vague when challenged, rather than rising to a conforontation. It’s just his nature, but it usually works in his favour. It’s hard to have a fight when only one person is arguing. "The good news is that it hasn’t metastasized - that means spread to other places in your body - so the most effective treatment for you is surgery to remove the tumour.”

Mr. Lee tries to interrupt, but Yixing holds up his hand again and continues. He’s falling back into the formal speech patterns he was taught when he learned Korean, the respectful language a protective barrier. “We can try radiation therapy, but would be significantly more uncomfortable for you as well as less effective. I would strongly recommend the surgical route. However, you are free to choose, and neither I nor any other doctor here will force you to accept treatment. In the end, it’s up to you.”

Mr. Lee leans back against his pillow and fixes Yixing with a severe look.

“What about chemotherapy?” His tone is challenging, but at least he isn’t shouting now.

Yixing shakes his head. “Chemotherapy works poorly on your type of tumour, so that’s not a good option.”

They look at each other for a few seconds. Mr. Lee seems like he's trying to stare him down, but Yixing just looks back with his vaguest expression, and eventually Mr. Lee glances away. His voice is quiet when he asks, “Does this mean I have to stop smoking?”

He’s finally broken through. Yixing slowly lets himself return from his protective emotional distance. A small smile touches his lips, the dimple in his cheek showing itself. Behind the anger is a scared man, as there always is.

“That is also your choice, but I would strongly recommend it. Smoking delays healing, and ceasing to smoke will minimize your risk of relapse.”

Mr. Lee is quiet for a while, then asks Yixing to send in his wife so they can discuss it. Yixing holds back a sigh. He doesn’t think anything good will come out of this, but it's not his place to stop them. He calls Nurse Choi, who brings Mrs. Lee back in, and steps out to let them have their “discussion”. Not even a minute later, the volume in the room rises again, their angry voices echoing down the corridor. So much for peace in the oncology ward.

He's thankful when he gets a chance to leave the ward for lunch. He sits in the public cafeteria on the ground floor, ordering food almost at random and eating without really tasting it. He’s alone with his thoughts until a small-statured figure appears beside his table, and he looks up and blinks as he recognizes Minseok.

“Mind if I join you?”

Yixing nods immediately. It’s not often that he eats with anyone apart from Songmi, but he's been friends with Minseok since they were both first-year residents, when Yixing was here on his exchange programme. It’s certainly much better than being alone, where every time he tries to stop thinking about Sooyoung, all he can come up with is worrying what to do with the arguing Lees.

“How are you doing?” Minseok asks, taking a large bite of his sandwich.

Yixing sighs. “I've just lost a young patient to palliative care and I have a newly-admitted patient arguing with his wife so loudly it can be heard throughout the entire ward. Let’s just say things could be better.”

Minseok hums sympathetically. “Patients can be real assholes, can’t they?” he says through his mouthful of bread.

Yixing is startled into a laugh. “You can’t just go around saying that."

Minseok shrugs. “You work in the ED, you meet enough drunks, idiots and crazy people to know it. It’s not like keeping quiet about it makes it any less true.”

Yixing considers this for a while, and comes to the conclusion that Minseok is probably right.

“What would you suggest I do with the fighting couple then?”

Minseok puts his sandwich down long enough to look at Yixing with a knowing gaze. Despite being the same age as his friend and just as experienced, Yixing suddenly feels like a little kid asking his big brother for advice. Being the chief of a whole department, especially one as challenging as the emergency department, seems to give his friend an air of presence and wisdom Yixing just doesn’t have.

“Nothing you say or do will affect their personal dynamics," Minseok tells him. "Close the door to the room so they don't bother your patients and staff as much and let them get on with it.”

Yixing blinks at him. With that all-knowing look Minseok had given him, he’d been expecting some pearl of world-shattering wisdom, not being essentially told to shut his eyes, cover his ears and pretend it’s not happening. Minseok sends him a lopsided grin and starts wolfing down his sandwich again. He always eats so fast that it makes Yixing wonder how he doesn't get indigestion, but that comes with being an emergency physician.

Yixing is only halfway through his meal when Minseok finishes. He leans back in his chair with a satisfied sigh and clasps his fingers behind his head, eyes half-closing.

“Success in life,” he says, “is when you get to finish a meal without the flipping beeper going off.”

“Too true,” Yixing agrees. “What about you, anyway? How are you doing?”

Minseok doesn't move from his pose of blissful relaxation, though it can't be all that comfortable on the hard cafeteria chair. “Do you know anyone you'd recommend in clinical psychology?”

The question takes Yixing by surprise. “Psychology?”

Minseok nods, eyes almost completely closed now.

“Uh, no, I don't think I know any clinical psychologists personally. Why?”

Minseok sighs. Yixing can see there’s something on his mind, but before his friend can continue, his pager starts up the loud, slow beeping that seems deliberately pitched to drill its way straight through Yixing’s skull. Minseok opens his eyes and gives his “beeper” a completely unfazed look.

“There she goes again,” he says. He unlinks his fingers from behind his head and stands up. “Oh well. It was good talking to you, Yixing. Don’t work too hard.”

Yixing stares at Minseok’s disappearing back. Coming out of Minseok , _d_ on’t work too hard is almost a joke, only Yixing is not laughing. He is not the one who works all day, every day, the whole year round. He frowns down at his half-eaten meal. There was definitely a reason for that question about the psychologist. Minseok had been going to tell him something - something real, not just the surface-level stuff he usually hides under.

Fifteen minutes later he reluctantly makes his way back to the oncology ward, where he finds that, unbelievably, Mr. and Mrs. Lee are still fighting. The nurses have shut the blinds and closed the door, but their muffled voices can still be heard all the way down the corridor. Yixing wants to cry. He stops at the nursing station and looks pleadingly at Nurse Choi.

“Aren't they ever going to stop?”

She gives him a philosophical shrug. "Who knows? At least Mr. Lee has agreed to surgery now.”

She hands him a new clipboard, and Yixing moves off to deal with his next patient.

When Yixing gets home that evening, the apartment is warm and filled with delicious smells of home cooking. He slips out of his shoes and into his slippers and steps through into the open-plan living space, where he sees Songmi. She’s sitting in the corner of the couch, her feet tucked up under her like a cat, a glass of red wine balanced between the fingers of one hand and a book in the other. Because she’s reading, she’s put on her glasses, and he can’t help smiling at the sight of the round black frames dominating her face.

“I'm home,” he calls, knowing she won’t have heard him come in while she’s reading.

Songmi looks up and beams at him. She puts her book down, takes her glasses off, and jumps up to meet him in the kitchen area, where a small feast is already laid out on the table. Yixing sees that she’s made some of the Chinese dishes his mom taught her, and he falls in love with her for the millionth time over. How is it that she always knows when he needs familiarity and comfort?

“Hi, baby,” she says, standing on tip-toes to kiss him hello. Yixing opens his arms and Songmi puts her wine glass down on the table and snuggles close to him. He rests his cheek on the top of her head, closes his eyes, and breathes in the warm, spiced scent of her shampoo. Songmi doesn't pull away even though the hug lasts several long minutes, just humming under her breath and rocking him gently where they stand. She can tell he needs her without him even saying anything.

It's Yixing who finally lets go. “You look lovely,” he says, indicating the elegant red dress she’s wearing. She doesn't usually dress up like this just for dinner in the apartment together. “What’s the occasion?”

“Tell you later.” She smiles at him gently, then takes his wrist and leads him to the dinner table, sitting down beside him as usual. “Bad day, huh?”

Yixing nods. “Sooyoung has been admitted to hospice.”

“Oh no,” Songmi says. “Oh darling, I'm sorry. I know you care a lot about her.”

Yixing chews his lip. “Do you think I should go visit her?” He doesn’t normally go to see his patients in hospice, but Sooyoung is different. It's unlikely she'll be aware enough to recognize him, but maybe it would help her mother to see him again. He could answer any questions she might have. He’s not sure if it would overstep a boundary, though. Officially his role in Sooyoung’s life ended when she was discharged from hospital care. And maybe her mother won’t want to see him again. After all, he failed to save her daughter.

“Do you think it would help you to visit her?” Songmi asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe. The palliative care facility always makes me depressed, though." He picks up his chopsticks. "If I do go, will you come with me?”

She grins at him. “Of course, you know that. My big strong oncologist, you can always count on me, even though I’m only a nurse.”

Yixing taps her nose with a finger. “Hey now, what’s this only a nurse business? You know doctors would be lost without nurses. Nurses deserve all the love they can get." He kisses the side of her head loudly, and Songmi giggles.

"Does that mean you kiss all the nurses like this?"

Yixing leans back a little and grins at her. "Wouldn't you like to know," he says, and pretends to be mortally wounded by the smack she aims at his shoulder.

As they eat the familiar dishes from Yixing's childhood, tease each other and chat about any topic that comes up, Yixing's his heart lightens. Songmi always knows just how to make him feel better. He sometimes thinks she understands him better than he even understands himself.

When they've finished eating and Yixing has loaded the dishwasher and set it going, they relax on the couch with their wine glasses on the coffee table in front of them. The large windows allow a beautiful view of the Seoul night skyline and the colorful lights of the buildings on the other side of the Han river reflect in the wide expanse of dark water. The bridges glow with the headlights of the cars driving over them. They were lucky to get this apartment and now that they have it, Yixing is sure he’ll never get rid of it.

Songmi snuggles into his side. “I'd like to discuss something with you,” she says.

Yixing feels a sudden twitch of nervousness, and his leg starts bouncing automatically. She rarely sounds this serious. His mind starts conjuring up bizarre situations, everything from "I’m pregnant with triplets even though I’m on birth control" to "I got fired" to "I’m adopting ten cats and also a miniature pony" running in quick succession through his mind. Songmi notices his alarm and chuckles. She puts a hand on his bouncing leg to still it and smiles at him.

“Calm down, baby. It’s nothing bad.”

Yixing relaxes a little. “What is it, then?”

“What do you think about getting off birth control?” Songmi asks. Her eyes are soft, glowing as she smiles up at him. "It's been in my mind for a while, and I'm sure about it now. If you feel ready too, I'd like to try for a child."

Yixing stares at her. He had not been expecting this, but as the idea sinks in, the residual nervousness gets replaced by something akin to excitement.

“Really?” he asks.

Songmi nods. “What do you think?”

Yixing finds that he's smiling, dimples on both sides deep in his cheeks.

“I think you’ll be the most amazing mother in the world.” He leans forward to kiss her. Songmi giggles against his mouth and squirms as his fingers travel up her sides.

“Stop tickling me,” she gasps. Yixing laughs. He crawls his fingers along her ribs once more, just for good measure, and leans close to whisper in her ear.

“What do you say we start trying right here, right now?”

  
\---

If that annoying occupational health and safety woman who comes around all the departments every couple of months and lectures Kyungsoo on his bad posture while sitting at his computer could see him now, she’d probably blow an aneurysm. He’s hunched forward over his keyboard with one hand propping his chin up while the other scrolls his mouse, neck tilted up at an angle to see the screens better, and his feet are hooked behind the central pole of the seat below him. Luckily for Kyungsoo, she’s not making her rounds this afternoon, and he’s free to inspect the full CT scan of a 56-year-old male trauma patient uninterrupted.

Minseok had called Kyungsoo himself with the patient’s history. Park Yonghwan had been hiking solo on a mountain and wandered off the trail, where he’d fallen down a steep slope and landed on a boulder. After spending the night on the mountain he was found, alert and only mildly hypothermic, by search and rescue teams and airlifted to Seoul. Minseok has diagnosed two fractured ribs and a pneumothorax on examination alone before even sending the man through to radiology. Kyungsoo is peering at the lung images now. The two displaced ribs Minseok diagnosed are glaringly obvious on CT and it’s clear where one of them has punctured the right lung, leading to its collapse. Kyungsoo finds three more ribs are fractured but not displaced and jots his notes down to relay back to his friend in the emergency department. It’s his job now to check the rest of the imaging results for any other internal injuries the ED team may not have found.

He doesn’t find any internal bleeding apart from the injured right chest area, and the abdominal organs are all fine. He flicks over to the CT head. Park Yonghwan has told Minseok that he didn’t hit his head and his neurological exam was fine, so Kyungsoo isn’t expecting to find anything. He taps a finger idly against his cheekbone as he focuses on the round white cranium filled with the grey tones of the brain on the screen, eyes flicking back and forth as he searches through multiple image slices for any abnormality. There are five systems to analyze on a CT head, which means he has to look at the scan five times over, starting with the most potentially dangerous condition and working through to the least. Maybe not all radiologists are this thorough, but Kyungsoo is a perfectionist and never strays an inch from best practice.

He clears the scan for blood, cistern, and brain matter, and is halfway through ventricles when there’s a knock on his door. He glances around as it opens and Minseok walks in.

“Sorry I didn’t call first,” Minseok says. He looks tired, Kyungsoo thinks. Tireder than usual. “Can I see the chest imaging?”

Kyungsoo flicks back to the chest window to show him the image of the fractured ribs. Minseok leans over his shoulder and nods as Kyungsoo points out the displaced fractures and the three that are still in place.

“Any bleeding in the abdominal cavity?” Minseok asks.

“Abdominal organs all look fine," Kyungsoo tells him. "The only bleeding is around the pleura, as you’d expect.” He knows this is the information Minseok needs to help him decide if it’s safe to send the patient to the cardiothoracic surgeon to get his lung fixed, or if there’s any life-threatening internal bleeding that needs to be addressed first.

Minseok claps his shoulder in thanks and takes his phone out of his pocket. He stands in the middle of Kyungsoo’s office as he tells his team to transport Park Yonghwan for cardiothoracic surgery. Kyungsoo tunes out the sound of his friend’s voice as he flicks back to the slice of the brainstem he’d gotten to. He clears ventricles and moves onto the last system, bones. He knows he won’t find anything. By the time he’s looked at the slices four times, he would have seen any problems with the bones even though he was focusing on other systems, but Kyungsoo checks them anyway, as he always does.

“How’s it looking?” Minseok has finished ordering the patient transfer. He leans wearily against Kyungsoo’s desk and runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up on end. It’s one of the unconscious habits that only adds to Minseok’s appearance of barely being held together at the seams.

“I’m gonna glue a surgical cap to your head one day,” Kyungsoo grumbles without taking his eyes off his computer screen.

Minseok laughs. “What? Why?”

“You're always running your hand through your hair. Makes you look like you got dragged through a hedge backwards.” Kyungsoo clears his last slice and leans back in his chair to look up at his friend, rolling his head to try and ease the tension in his neck.

Minseok puts a hand to his head and attempts to flatten his hair down. “I guess a permanent surgical cap would make hair care a lot simpler,” he says with his trademark lopsided grin. “Head okay?”

He’s talking about the imaging. “All clear,” Kyungsoo says, but as the words pass his lips he finds himself frowning. He looks back at the screen. For some reason, saying those words didn’t feel right.

“What?” Minseok reads his expression. “You think there’s something else?”

Kyungsoo gives a slow shake of his head. “Scan looks clear, but…” He’s pulling the first slice back up as he speaks. He's got a weird feeling that there’s something he’s missed, something the scans aren’t showing him. It doesn’t even make sense, because there was no reported head trauma, but Kyungsoo knows he’s not going to be able to relax now unless he goes through all these slices another five times over.

“Did you get a hunch?” Minseok asks.

Kyungsoo nods. Nine times out of ten hunches comes to nothing, but there’s always that tenth time.

“Let me go through this again.”

“No problem. I’ll wait,” Minseok says. “It’s a heck of a lot more peaceful in here than the ED.”

Kyungsoo nods vaguely. Blood, he’s thinking as he goes through his slices again. It’s the first system to look for because it’s potentially the deadliest. Any brain bleed is dangerous, even tiny ones. He searches every millimeter of the image, identifying each part of the brain, seeking for even the tiniest white speck on the image, any minuscule smudge among the shades of grey that isn’t quite where it should be. Any clue that will tell him something isn’t right in Park Yonghwan’s brain.

He’s barely aware of Minseok going over to the couch on the far wall of his office and flopping down on it with a sigh. He’s looking at the brainstem. Could there be isodense bleeding? Is that why he’s not seeing it?

“Did you get bloodwork?” he asks without turning around. “Is he anaemic?”

“Only the routine trauma bloods," Minseok tells him from the couch. "No reason to do iron studies.”

Kyungsoo scowls at his screen. He knows there’s no reason to test for iron deficiency in an emergency trauma patient, but it would sure be helpful to know right now. He moves to the next slice of the brainstem. His eyes flick back and forth across the image, then freeze.

“Shit."

Minseok is immediately on his feet and crossing the office. “What?”

“There’s an epidural hematoma in front of the brainstem. It’s practically invisible, isodense - this patient’s anaemic or I’ll eat my left shoe.”

Minseok is leaning over him. “Show me.”

Kyungsoo’s already circling the area. “You have to cancel the chest surgery,” he says. “It’s small now but it’ll be expanding as we speak. If that thing compresses the brainstem he’s had it.”

Minseok is already on his phone, barking instructions to cancel the chest surgery and call the on-call neurosurgeon, rushing out the door as he speaks. Through his open office door Kyungsoo watches the ED chief burst through a cluster of startled technicians, scattering them like leaves in his wake.

He turns back to his computer and quickly types in his description for the neurosurgeon into the system. The rest is out of his hands. He stands up and walks slowly towards his office door. He’s not one to get easily unsettled, but this has rattled him slightly. He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his white coat, leans against his doorframe, and stares moodily at the white donut-shaped scanner that nearly fills the small scanning room for a while. He’s not sure whether he’s exhilarated that he found a practically invisible bleed that most radiologists would have missed, or terrified by the fact that he, too, would have missed it if he hadn’t acted on his “hunch”. If he’d missed it, Park Yonghwan would have died.

Three hours later he’s well back into his normal operating mode, peering gloomily at a procession of scans with nothing even half so interesting as an occult epidural brain bleed, when his phone rings.

“Dr. Do speaking.”

“Hey. Do you have time for a coffee? You don’t have to go anywhere, I’ll come up to the radiology break room.”

It’s Minseok’s voice. Kyungsoo looks at the clock - 10 to 4 - then at his queue of images. Nothing’s marked urgent. All normal, routine scans. Good for patients, boring for Kyungsoo.

"Sure," he tells Minseok.

He heads to the break room and brews some coffee. His friend arrives just as he’s pouring it into a couple of the mismatched mugs that have been left behind over the years by various staff coming and going. His hair is messier than ever and the ever-precarious stethoscope is hanging out of his pocket again. Kyungsoo passes him a mug and they sit down at the table in the middle of the room. There’s nobody else in here and the room is quiet. Kyungsoo sips his drink and looks out the window at the grey afternoon. The trees are leafless now, and everything looks dull, but also peaceful. He likes the feeling of winter. There’s something strangely beautiful about the bare bones of the trees and the monochrome sky.

“That was an amazing catch earlier,” Minseok says after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “Not many people would have found that.”

Kyungsoo can’t help the slight smile that tugs at his lips. He’s rather proud of the catch too.

“Any news on the patient?”

“Still in surgery, but Dr. Choi told me before she went in that she was confident of a positive outcome.” Minseok takes another sip of coffee. “I know a lot of people treat radiologists like you’re glorified photographers, but things like this really prove them wrong. You saved that man’s life today.”

“Please tell that to those arrogant children you call ED residents,” Kyungsoo says. Minseok laughs, and though Kyungsoo was mostly joking, Minseok still promises to bring it up in his next department meeting.

“How are your girls?” Kyungsoo asks, and Minseok tells him that he’d taken his older daughter to her soccer game on the weekend.

“She tells me she wants to play for the national women’s team one day,” Minseok says with a fond smile. “Kids dream big, don’t they?”

Kyungsoo wouldn’t know. He doesn’t know any kids and his own childhood seems so far behind him that it seems to have happened to another person. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t changed much since he was a kid anyway. He was probably born cynical, and he’s only now catching up to his personality.

Minseok’s proud smile fades all too quickly, and his face loses some of its light. It makes Kyungsoo notice again how deeply tired his friend looks. He doesn’t often notice how other people really look, because watching faces is uncomfortable and it’s easier to focus on things like hair or clothing, but Minseok is one of his few friends and probably Kyungsoo’s closest. He recalls seeing Minseok drinking alone in the bar when he’d met Jongdae, and how over the past few months he’s been seeing increasing signs of some deeper problem running below Minseok’s always-busy surface. But he doesn’t know how to approach. He wants to, but he just doesn’t know how.

“Do you know any practicing psychologists?” Minseok’s question takes Kyungsoo by surprise, and he reacts as he always does to surprises. A slow blink and a blank expression.

“Yeah,” he says, thinking of the study partner he’d had in medical school. They’d gotten on pretty well, mainly because they’d discovered they were both into World of Warcraft, but Yifan had ended up transferring to psychology. Kyungsoo knows he’s a clinical psychologist now, though he’s not sure where he practices out of, but a quick Naver search will tell him that. But why would Minseok ask that question? Is there something really wrong? It might not be for him, of course. He might want to refer someone else -

Minseok is grinning at him. “This is where you tell me the name of the psychologist you know,” he prompts.

“Ah, right,” Kyungsoo says, a little embarrassed to be caught spacing out. “His name is Wu Yifan. We were in med school together, but he couldn't get over his issues with blood. He’d pass out every time he saw a bleeding patient. It wasn’t exactly helpful.”

Minseok laughs. He pulls out his phone and taps the name in. “Thanks.”

Kyungsoo spends the next few minutes stressing over whether it would be considered caring or nosy to ask why Minseok wants the name of a psychologist, and if asking might annoy his friend either way, but before he's come to a conclusion Minseok’s pager goes. He gulps the last of his coffee down and vanishes back to the ED, and Kyungsoo reluctantly makes his way back to his waiting procession of normal, boring CT scans.

He finishes on time at 5 pm and gets changed in his office. As he shrugs into a dress shirt his phone vibrates on the desk, and he reads the message that pops up on the lock screen. It’s his mom, reminding him that they’re meeting for dinner at a restaurant tonight.

“Yes, I remembered, mom,” he mutters. He wishes now that he’d made some excuse instead of agreeing to come, but his guilt got the better of him when his mom pointed out that she hasn't seen him for nearly three months. Her last lecture about how he needs to find a nice Christian girl, marry her, and pop out a brood of grandchildren for her to dote on still echoes far too clearly in his mind. Another message lights the phone screen up as he’s trying to get the stiff buttons on the cuffs done up. _Remember to dress smartly, it’s a nice place._

“Why do you think I’m having world war three with these stupid buttons,” he grumbles. He knows his mom’s standards for dressing smartly. When he’s finally conquered his cuffs, he texts back. _I know. I will._

Maybe she won’t lecture him tonight, he thinks with little hope as he leaves and joins the crushing rush-hour cluster of people heading down into the subway. Maybe a flock of pigs will soar across the Seoul sunset. Maybe ED residents will grow some respect for poor, overworked radiologists.

He reaches the restaurant after a 45-minute subway ride during which he’s repeatedly battered on all sides by commuters. For the thousandth time he considers finding time to take his driving test so he can get a car, and as usual comes to the conclusion that he’d probably get even more frustrated driving in rush hour traffic than fighting his way through rush-hour subway stations. He moves with the crowd into the Cheondamdong street and looks for the restaurant his mother has decided to drag him to. By the time he’s located it, it’s a little after six. Not late enough to worry, he decides as he steps into a lobby so luxurious and beautifully decorated that it tells him he’s going to be spending a stupid amount of money on this meal, especially since he’ll doubtless be paying for both of them. His mother has never had any qualms about taking advantage of his salary, but he supposes he can't begrudge her a fine dining experience every now and then, considering all the other ways in which he disappoints her.

Now that he’s found the place, he takes off his glasses and puts them into the pocket of his pressed linen jacket. His mother’s idea of _dressing smartly_ includes him not wearing his thick, black-framed glasses, even though it makes him so blind everything more than three meters ahead of him becomes little more than a coloured blur.

A maitre’d in a silk waistcoat bows when he approaches. “What name is your reservation under, sir?”

“Kim Heesun.” He gives his mother’s name, and the man leads him through the restaurant. Without his glasses on, the people sitting at the tables are nothing but a vague blur, so it’s not until the maitre’d deposits him at his mother’s table and she’s stood up to hug him, engulfing him in a cloud of cloying perfume, that he realizes she’s not alone.

He stares at the girl sitting at the white-clothed table over his mother’s shoulder. She’s just on the border of too far away for him to make out her features without his glasses on. Alarm bells start to ring inside him, the first beginnings of dread trickling down his spine. Who is this girl? Does he know her? Why is she here?

“It’s so lovely to see you, dear,” his mother says. She lets him go and takes a step back, and he gets another faceful of her perfume. He sneezes into his elbow, eyes beginning to water. That perfume always sets off his allergies.

His mother pulls at his wrist, dragging him closer to the table and pushing him down onto the velvet-cushioned seat she’d been sitting on. This puts him close enough to see the unknown girl’s face opposite him, but he's too alarmed to look at her directly. His mother is standing above him, both hands firmly pressing down on his shoulders, as if she’s quite aware that if she stops holding him into this seat he’s liable to leap up and bolt.

“Kyungsoo, you remember Lee Taeah, don’t you? Lee Taehee’s little sister, from Sunday school.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes are finally forced to go to the girl’s face. He gives her an awkward half-nod, half-bow. He feels like he’s plunging down in an out-of-control elevator. His mind is frantically trying to think of any possible way that this isn’t what it seems, his mother hasn’t done this, she can’t be doing this to him -

“Hi, Kyungsoo. Long time no see.” Taeah smiles at him. Kyungsoo just blinks at her like an idiot. He does remember Taeah, though not very well. She was three or four years younger than him and Taehee, right? _Oh God, oh God_ , he thinks. She was the one who used to follow him around all the time. His way of dealing with it was to pretend she wasn’t there, which hadn’t deterred her at all. He feels his face start to color with embarrassment. _God, please. Just take me now._

“Mom." He finally manages to find his voice. "What’s going on?”

“It’s time you two got to know each other again!” his mother chirrups. “Taeah’s a lovely girl, and you know the Lees, they’re a very nice family. I’ll leave you two to get along now. Have a nice evening!”

She takes her hands off his shoulders and disappears in a puff of perfume. Kyungsoo turns his face away from his unexpected dinner companion as he sneezes rapidly, five times in quick succession.

“Sorry,” he croaks, and finds a napkin pushed across the table at him. He takes it and dabs it at his watering eyes.

“Do you have a cold, oppa?” Taeah asks. Kyungoo cringes internally at being called _oppa_ by a girl he barely knows anymore.

“No,” he says, voice slightly muffled through the napkin. “I’m allergic to my mom’s perfume.”

Taeah giggles. “That must make your house a very sneezy place.”

“She only wears it on special occasions. Besides, I don’t live at home any more.”

He gets control of his allergies and puts the napkin down. Then he takes his glasses out of his pocket. There’s no point in obeying his mother’s stupid dress code when she’s not even here, and trying to focus without them makes his head ache.

Taeah’s face comes into focus. He would never have recognized the chattering tag-along eleven-year-old in the young woman sitting before him; she’s all grown up now, elegant in a black velvet dress and diamond earrings. She has a small face, with delicate features and large, doe-like eyes. Kyungsoo isn’t blind to beauty, he’s just not attracted to people because of it. She smiles at him and he looks down hurriedly. He wants to dive under the white tablecloth, put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes, and pretend he doesn’t exist. This is his worst nightmare come true.

“It’s lovely to see you again. I’m glad our parents thought we’d get on well together,” Taeah says when he’s stared in silent panic at the tablecloth for at least a minute. “I heard you’re a doctor now? That’s so cool. I always knew you’d do something smart.”

Kyungsoo has to stop this. He can’t let Taeah get her hopes up, it’s not fair to her. _Act like a mature adult_ , he tells himself forcefully. _Get a grip._

“Listen, Taeah,” he says. He forces his eyes up from the tablecloth. He's too ashamed to meet her eyes, so he uses a trick his radiology mentor once taught him and stares hard at the bridge of her nose instead. “I’m really sorry about this. My mother arranged this meeting without telling me. I had no idea she was setting us up. It’s nothing personal, but I’m not looking for a relationship at this time.” _Or ever_ , he thinks, but bites down before he can say it.

A faint flush comes to Taeah’s cheeks. She glances down at the tablecloth, and he can see her embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. He feels terrible, but there’s no way he can go through with this, and it would be worse if he let it get any further.

“Oh, well.” Taeah's tone is light, but Kyungsoo can tell it’s forced. “I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. You never were interested in me.”

Kyungsoo wants to smash his head down onto the table. She’s hurt, and it’s all his fault. Surely any other man would be interested in a pretty, friendly girl like Taeah. What is wrong with him? Why does he have to be such a freak?

“I’d be happy to hang out with you as friends?” he offers miserably, but she’s already standing up. She gives a little laugh and gathers up her purse.

“Don’t bother, Kyungsoo. I’ve got plenty of friends who actually want to hang out with me,” she says. Her tone isn’t particularly harsh. It’s just the truth, and they both know it. “I hope your career goes well.”

She turns and walks out of the restaurant. Kyungsoo stays seated at the table long enough to give her time to get away, and then stands up himself.

“Are you leaving, sir?” The maitre’d has reappeared.

Kyungsoo nods. “Sorry. I’ll need to cancel this reservation.”

Canceling the reservation without notice, it turns out, costs him 150,000 won, but he pays the charge without argument, desperate to get out of there. He’s more stressed out than if he’d done a week of back-to-back call shifts. All he wants to do is go home to his apartment, turn off all the lights, submerge into the world of gaming and forget the real world exists until the sun comes up tomorrow morning.

He heads towards the subway in a cloud of unhappiness and frustration. He’s mad at his mom for putting him and Taeah in this situation, but he’s just as mad at himself. She wouldn't have felt like she needed to do this if Kyungsoo was normal. Why can’t he just be like everyone else? It’s a natural instinct to want to reproduce, to be attracted to healthy partners. Why does the mere idea physically repulse him? What is _wrong_ with him?

Everywhere he looks, evidence of his abnormality jumps out at him. Teenagers holding hands, parents carrying children in their arms, grandparents walking in step. The ad on the bus shelter displays a couple sharing a popular soda drink; the movie poster on the side of the theatre he passes displays two foreign actors kissing; the song playing over the outdoor speakers of a bar croons about undying love. The whole world is about romance, and Kyungsoo is isolated among it all. Unable to understand. Unable to belong.


	10. December 7th

“Dr. Jung,” Joonmyun announces to the operating room, “will make the incision.”

The first-year resident freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. The only part of Jung Kijoon’s face on show is a pair of wide, light brown eyes, but they’re more than expressive enough to show Joonmyun the flash of panic the 25-year-old feels at the sudden command. Joonmyun understands. He felt the same the first time he was told to actually cut a patient himself. Instead of having the nice, relaxing ride in the OR he’d expected, assisting a senior surgeon, being told exactly what to do, and basically being a glorified theatre nurse, something critical was suddenly in his hands, something that could cause a disaster if he made even the tiniest mistake. It’s every junior resident’s dream to operate on a patient - you just don’t feel like a real surgeon until you’ve picked up the scalpel and made the cut yourself - but when the moment actually comes, it’s terrifying. Joonmyun knows Kijoon is ready for this, though. He’s been assisting in cardiothoracic surgery for the past three months, and when Joonmyun had mentioned it to the attending surgeon this morning, Dr. Lee had agreed it was time Kijoon took the next step.

He nods encouragingly at the young resident. Kijoon visibly gathers himself and steps forward, swapping places with Joonmyun to take the lead surgeon’s position at the table. The patient is a 63-year-old man with lung cancer, and the surgery they will be performing today is a thoracotomy with wedge resection, cutting out the tumor in the left lung along with a wedge-shaped piece of the surrounding lung tissue.

He watches as Kijoon runs his fingers down the sternum and across to find the second intercostal space, then moves down across the ribs until he’s at the fifth intercostal space, where he palpates through the flesh to feel for the ribs. He takes a skin marker and draws a 6-inch purple line, indicating where he’ll make the incision. Joonmyun moves closer to check the position.

“Good,” he says. “Go ahead.”

Kijoon takes his place again and holds out a hand. “Scalpel."

The theatre nurse passes him the sharp tool. Kijoon holds it gingerly in his fingertips and moves it slowly towards the patient's side.

“Not like that.” Joonmyun stops him. “Don’t hold it like a pencil. Put it in your hand and grip it firmly.” He takes the scalpel from Kijoon and demonstrates, holding the scalpel deep in his palm, then passes it back.

Kijoon grips the scalpel properly, puts it against the patient’s skin, and hesitates. Joonmyun watches carefully. So does everyone else in the operating room - the anesthesiologist, the respiratory therapist, the intern on her cardiology rotation, the head theatre nurse and two assistant nurses, all interested to see how the first-year resident will handle his first live cut. Kijoon takes in a visible breath and draws the scalpel down the purple line. Six pairs of eyes look expectantly at what he’s done. There’s a short, loaded silence.

“Hmm,” Joonmyun says, fighting to keep the grin from spreading across his face. Kijoon has drawn a beautifully accurate line along the fifth intercostal space, as proven by the string of tiny, bubble-shaped beads of blood slowly rising up on the skin, but the cut is so shallow it’s barely even a scratch. He wants to laugh, but that wouldn't help the resident’s confidence at all. He remembers all too well how hard he’d taken every joke at his expense when he was new to surgery.

“Sorry,” says Kijoon. Joonmyun can sense the nurses and the intern all grinning behind their masks. He forces his voice to remain calm and not betray his own amusement.

“Well, go on,” he says. “Try again. Push on that thing and make a decent incision.”

Kijoon grips the scalpel, then realizes before Joonmyun has to tell him that he’s holding it like a pencil again and adjusts his grip. He brings the blade back up to the top of the incision line, pushes deep into the patient’s skin and draws it down. Everyone looks again. This time Kijoon has incised down to the subcutaneous tissue.

“Good,” Joonmyun says.

Kijoon leans forward again, but Joonmyun stops him. “Deep knife,” he reminds the resident. Although the patient’s skin has been scrubbed, the hair follicles may still contain traces of bacteria, so any scalpel used to cut the skin is considered contaminated. Once the incision is made, the “skin knife” is exchanged for the “deep knife”. When Kijoon puts the skin knife down and turns to the head nurse, she’s already holding the next scalpel ready.

The resident works his way down through layers of greasy yellow fat, and Joonmyun assists, using the suction to push aside the layers of fat and point the way. What would take him twenty seconds is taking the nervous resident ten minutes, but Joonmyun is patient. There’s only one way to get experience, and that’s by doing it. He’d far rather the kid was over-cautious than careless. Finally they get to the fascia between the ribs, and Joonmyun taps it with his suction.

“What’s this?”

“That’s the fascia overlying the external intercostal, Dr. Kim.”

“And beneath that are?”

“The internal and innermost intercostals.”

Joonmyun nods. He gently edges Kijoon over, takes the scalpel, and incises the fascia in one delicate stroke. It’s time to get a move on with this surgery.

He’s about halfway through the lung resection when he hears the operating room door slide open. He doesn’t pay it much attention. People sometimes do come and go during surgery, and it’s his job to focus on the patient, not do crowd control, but the voice of the new arrival still filters through his focus.

“There’s a call for Dr. Kim. Apparently his wife is in labor.”

Now Joonmyun looks up.

“What?” He turns to stare at the nurse standing in the doorway, fingers frozen in place, halfway inside the patient’s spread-open ribcage. “What did you say?”

“Your wife, Dr. Kim. Lee Yejin? She’s been admitted to the labor ward.”

Joonmyun’s mind has frozen along with his hands. He takes his fingers out of the patient’s chest and the head nurse takes his tool from him. The shock only lasts for a second. Then panic crashes into him like a 100-mile-an-hour train.

“What? WHAT? Yejin is in labor? Now? She can’t be. She’s not due till the end of December!” The words fall out of his mouth so fast they’re tripping over each other. “I - I’m not ready yet!”

He looks wildly around the operating room. The surgical team are all staring at him like he's lost his mind. It's probably an accurate assessment, Joonmyun thinks, trying to tamp down on his panic. He looks back down at his patient with the rib spreaders holding his chest open and his half-resectioned lung visible between the metal protractors and clamps. The head nurse is talking to the messenger, and her words only partly penetrate his panicked thoughts. Is something wrong? Why is Yejin in labor nearly 4 weeks early?

“Go call Dr. Lee,” the head nurse is telling the messenger. “Ask him if he’ll take over. Dr. Kim needs to go.”

Yes, yes, Joonmyun needs to go, but he can only go if Dr. Lee - the attending surgeon and Joonmyun’s senior - agrees to take over this partially completed surgery. There’s nobody else in the room capable of doing it, and even if Dr. Lee agrees, Joonmyun will have to stay here for at least another 15 minutes while Dr. Lee stops whatever he’s doing, gets down to the surgical suite, gets changed and scrubs in. He has to calm down, but it’s hard when his heart is hammering and his mind is going round in panicked circles. He’s terrified something bad has happened to make Yejin go into labor early, and he’s also terrified by the fact that Yejin is in labor and he’s not there with her. He has to be there. He’s been to all the classes with her, learned how to breathe and how to do the pain management techniques, promised her he’ll be by her side the whole time. He can’t let her go through this alone.

“She’ll be fine.” The head nurse is apparently reading his mind - or maybe his panic is obvious even to people who can’t read minds. “Babies don’t pop out instantly, you know. Dr. Lee will be here soon and then you can go.”

“Okay. Yes. You're right.” Joonmyun nods several times. He can do this. He can get a grip. He shoves the jabbering voice of panic to the back of his mind and ruthlessly forces himself to focus on finishing the section of the lung he’s on and getting it in a good place for the attending surgeon to take over.

It seems like a hundred years before Dr. Lee arrives, but it's actually only 20 minutes before the older man walks calmly in through the operating room doors. Joonmyun doesn’t even wait to give his senior a polite greeting before he’s babbling out the steps he’s taken and the part in the procedure he’s gotten to. He’s actually bobbing up and down on his toes with agitation by the time he rushes to a stop, staring wide-eyed up at his taller colleage. Dr. Lee’s eyes crinkle above his mask in an amused smile.

“Okay, Dr. Kim,” he says. “I got this. Off you go.”

Joonmyun doesn’t wait to be told twice. He bolts out of the operating room and into the scrubbing area, where he de-gowns so fast he actually rips the tough disposable fabric. He hurls gloves, cap and gown in the general direction of the trash can, doesn’t see if they actually make it in, frantically scrubs his hands and arms up to his elbows in yellow soap, kicking at the foot-controlled petals of the taps to wash it off. He pelts down the corridor and skids to a sliding stop at the elevators. The staff elevator is on the 13th floor and the public one is at sub-basement 2. Forget it. Joonmyun runs to the stairwell and bangs through the heavy fire door.

He flies down three levels of stairs and along the corridor to the labor ward, where he skids to a halt in front of the reception desk, the rubber Crocs he wears in surgery screeching on the vinyl floor. He hears a low, steady wail that builds and builds until it becomes an scream, then fades away again. The sound is so primal it sends shivers through him. Is it Yejin? It doesn’t sound like her, but he’s barely heard her even raise her voice before, let alone scream.

He spins around in a circle, still panting from his flat-out sprint to get here. There’s nobody at reception and he needs to be told where Yejin is. Thankfully the receptionist appears seconds later, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. Joonmyun almost pounces on the reception desk, his body hitting the high wooden front with a thump he doesn't even feel. "Lee Yejin," he gasps. "Where's Lee Yejin?"

The receptionist sits down placidly and taps at her keyboard. Joonmyun jitters, forcing himself not to scream at her to hurry up. “Ah, here we are. Room 8. That’s straight ahead and to your -” she trails off as she looks up, finding she’s talking to empty air. Joonmyun is already gone.

He finds room 8. The door is closed and a large sign on it tells him to “please knock”. He knocks obediently, but can’t bear to wait for an answer before he’s pulling it open and staring inside. His eyes immediately find Yejin, lying on the bed with the back in a half-reclined position. She looks at him and smiles, and his hammering heart gives an immediate cry of gratitude to see her alert, calm, and looking as well as ever.

He crosses the room rapidly to stand at her bedside. She reaches out a hand and he takes it in both of his, trying to calm himself down. He’s fighting a losing battle there though, and they both know it. She smiles at him, that beautiful smile he loves so much, as clear and calm as ever.

“Are you okay?” Joonmyun asks her. He glances around for the nurse. “She’s okay, right? Why is it early? This - this is not supposed to happen yet!”

Yejin laughs as the nurse starts to reassure him. “We’re a little early, yes, but three and a half weeks is only on the borderline of preterm. There’s barely any extra risk of complications to the baby at this stage. Sometimes these things just happen.” The nurse shares a smile with Yejin. “Little Yejoon is eager to meet his mom and dad, that’s all.”

Joonmyun drops onto the chair at the side of the bed. He brings Yejin’s hand to his face and rests it against his forehead, closing his eyes.

“Darling,” Yejin says. Her voice is low and soothing. “You’re shaking. Don’t worry. I’m absolutely fine, I promise.”

“I was doing a lung resection,” he tells her. His voice is shaking too. It's the adrenaline flooding his system. “I got a shock, that's all... Dr. Lee took over for me, but I was scared something was wrong, or that I wouldn’t get here in time...”

“Is that why you’re in scrubs? I should have known.” Joonmyun opens his eyes and she wrinkles her nose at him. “Go and get changed.”

“No,” Joonmyun says, shaking his head. “I just got here! I’m not leaving now!” He glances around again. “Where’s Jongdae - I mean, Dr. Kim?” He amends for the sake of the nurse. His friend is supposed to deliver their baby. Even though there’s no indication that they’ll need the presence of a medical doctor rather than a midwife, and Yejin’s pregnancy has been perfect, Joonmyun still wants the highest possible level of care for his wife. Now that she’s gone into labor early, he’s glad he insisted. The nurse can say all she likes about the risks being not much higher for babies born three weeks early, but Joonmyun knows his medical literature. Over the past eight months he’s read hundreds of studies around childbirth, along with nearly a library’s worth of books on parenting, and he remembers every detail. There’s a 10% increase in the incidence of respiratory and cardiac illness in babies born earlier than 37 weeks, and there’s no way in hell Joonmyun is going to take any chances.

“He’s performing a C-section,” the nurse tells him. “He’ll be done in ten minutes.”

“Honestly, love,” Yejin tells him. “Go and change. I’m only at 7 centimeters, and the contractions are three minutes apart. You have time.”

“But,” Joonmyun protests, “but what if it just starts happening? I mean, you might just suddenly fully dilate and -” he makes an expansive gesture.

“Then I’ll hold him in until you get here.”

Joonmyun stares at her. “You can do that?”

Yejin smiles at him. “I’m the mom, aren’t I?”

Joonmyun tries to remember anything in the literature that says a mother can purposefully hold back her childbirth, but hasn’t come up with anything when Yejin’s fingers tighten around his. “Contraction,” she whispers when he looks at her. Her face tenses and her body tightens as she squeezes his hand. She doesn’t scream, just makes a small groaning noise in her throat at the peak of the contraction, which fades away as her body relaxes. She pants a little, and he sees the beads of sweat on her temples as she sags against the bed.

That does it. Wild horses are not dragging Joonmyun out of this room, scrubs or no scrubs.

“Does it hurt a lot?” he asks anxiously.

“Only when the contraction is happening. It’s not bad between. Kind of like really bad cramps.”

“Do you want entonox?”

“I don’t think I need it, at least not yet.” Yejin nods to where the “laughing gas” tube is lying on the bed on her other side. “I’ll take it if it gets too bad.” She strokes his hand. “Don’t look so worried, love. This is all supposed to happen.”

“How are you so calm?” Joonmyun asks shakily. “I should be the one comforting you.”

“You wouldn’t be my Joonmyun if you didn’t worry yourself to close to death about me,” she tells him fondly. Then her face changes a little - a listening look. “Do you hear that?”

Joonmyun listens. The screams he’d heard on his way in have ceased, and now he hears a different cry. A smile comes onto Yejin’s face.

“That’s a newborn,” she whispers. “Someone’s just had a baby.”

Joonmyun looks at the round shape of Yejin’s stomach, her belly button pressing out under the white sheet. His son is in there, and he’s on his way out. He still can’t take it in. Is he ever going to be ready for this? For being a father?

“This is so sudden,” he says. “I thought we’d have three more weeks to prepare.”

“I know," Yejin says. “I didn’t even wash the cot sheets yet.”

Joonmyun gives a gasp of laughter. Cot sheets? Anxiety is pouring every obstetric and neonatal emergency he’s ever come across through his mind, and she’s worried about cot sheets? She truly has nerves of steel. She should be the surgeon, not him. Though maybe teaching math to nine-year-olds takes stronger nerves than open heart surgery. Somehow it wouldn’t surprise him.

Yejin has another contraction, and again she makes no noise other than that low groaning in her throat, though she nearly crushes Joonmyun’s fingers.

“Are you sure you want to hold my hand?" she asks when it's over. "I don’t want to be responsible for ending the career of a top cardiothoracic surgeon.”

“I know a guy in hand surgery if you do any damage,” Joonmyun says. Yejin giggles, then groans. "Oh God, don't make me laugh, love, not now."

"Sorry," Joonmyun says, though he hadn’t actually intended that to be a joke.

There’s a knock on the door before it’s slid open. Joonmyun looks around and a wave of relief washes over him. Jongdae has arrived. Having just finished a C-section, the ob-gyn is wearing dark blue short-sleeved surgical scrubs like Joonmyun. He smiles cheerfully at them both.

“What’s all this, Yejin?” he asks. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here for another couple of weeks at least.”

“I guess Yejoon is impatient to see the world,” Yejin says. Jongdae comes over to check on Yejin, and Joonmyun watches him anxiously from the head of the bed. Everyone’s so calm. How is everyone so calm? He feels like every nerve in his body is trying to jump right out of his skin.

“We have full dilation,” Jongdae announces. He looks up and grins at Joonmyun. “You know what? If Yejin can give us a few good pushes, you’re going to be a dad in less than half an hour.”

Half an hour? Joonmyun feels the blood drain from his face. Jongdae saying it like that really drives it home. How is he ever going to be a good father? What right does he have to bring a child into this world and think he can raise it? What if he ruins the kid’s life by accident? What if he’s the worst father ever?

“Joonmyun." He's pulled from his anxiety-driven thoughts by Jongdae's voice. When he sees that Joonmyun has met his eyes, the other man gives him a reassuring smile. "Don’t worry. Everything is happening exactly as it should be.”

Yejin starts another contraction. Joonmyun does the breathing technique with her while she crushes the life out of his fingers. The breathing technique is probably helping him more than her.

“Push,” Jongdae says firmly. “One long push - that’s it, that’s good.” Yejin makes the groaning noise again. Joonmyun has never felt so helpless.

“It’s okay to scream,” he tells her. “You should have heard the other lady screaming.”

“Believe me, I heard her,” Yejin gasps, sweat dripping down the side of her forehead and dampening her hair. “I’m fine.”

She’s so tough, he thinks as he smoothes her hair back. Another contraction comes and Jongdae again tells her to push. Yejin’s groan turns into a gasping cry this time. Joonmyun has tears in his eyes by the time she flops back again limply. Seeing her hurting so much is breaking his heart.

“One more good push and it’ll all be over,” Jongdae says, calm as ever. “You’re doing so well.”

“Hear that?” Joonmyun repeats. “You’re doing so well. It’ll all be over soon.”

The last contraction comes and Jongdae calls out as Yejin groans.

“I have a crown - eyes - nose - and we’re done!” There’s a slithering rush below the sheet, Yejin exhales in relief, and before Joonmyun even fully understands what’s happening, there’s a baby lying on his wife’s chest. Jongdae and the nurse swiftly rub white cloths around it and then they’re clamping the cord. Jongdae passes him a pair of surgical scissors.

“Cut,” he says. Joonmyun cuts between the two clamps. Tiny splashes of blood from the cut cord stain the white cloths. The baby takes in a breath and lets out a healthy, full-throated cry.

Joonmyun bursts into tears. Yejin’s arms are full of their son, so he puts his head down on the bed and sobs into the blankets.

“Well done,” Jongdae is telling Yejin somewhere above him. “You did beautifully. One of the quietest deliveries I’ve ever done.”

“Apart from the bawling husband, I suppose,” Yejin’s voice answers. He hears the amusement in her voice. “He’s crying enough for both of us.”

There's a warm hand on his back. Jongdae. “Joonmyun,” he says. His voice is kind but firm. “Come on, man. It’s time to say hello to Yejoon.”

Joonmyun raises his tear-stained face from the bed and sits up straight. Yejin passes him a bundle of white blankets, and Joonmyun looks down into his son’s face. He’d stopped crying after the first couple of bawls and now lies quietly in Joonmyun’s arms. He has a crown of soft black hair and delicately quirked eyebrows that give him an air of slight surprise. He has such a tiny, tiny nose, and such a pretty little mouth. A pair of huge black eyes gaze solemnly up at him.

Joonmyun falls instantly head over heels, down the side of a mountain, and off a cliff in love.

“Hi, Yejoon,” he whispers. “It’s me. It’s dad.”

Yejin’s hand is on his arm. “Hey, Yejoon’s dad,” she says softly, a smile in her voice. “I told you everything would be fine.”

“Hey, Yejoon’s mom.” Joonmyun just can’t take his eyes off his son, can’t stop the smile that’s spilling across his face, can’t stop the tears that drip down his cheeks. “I never doubted it for a second.”

\---

24-year-old Mu Eunkyung is Sehun’s last patient before lunch. She shrugs her large coat off and folds it on her lap as she sits down in front of him, and Sehun hides his dismay as he takes in the angry red plaques that mottle the skin on her forehead and eyelids. He can tell at a glance the treatment they've been trying hasn't worked. She's wearing a knitted beret over her hair, but he knows the psoriasis is mottling her scalp, too. She has tried to hide the skin condition on her face with a thick layer of makeup, but it’s to no avail as the flaking scales take the foundation with them, leaving the red patches beneath.

“It’s not working,” Eunkyung tells him. Sehun leans forward in his chair and takes the forearm she offers him, inspecting the patches that spread from wrist to elbow.

“No, I see that.” He turns her arm over and looks closer. “Has it spread any further?”

The answer is obvious in the way she sighs. Sehun feels sorry for her. Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes the body’s own T cells to attack the skin cells, and autoimmune conditions in general are notoriously difficult to treat. All Sehun can do is trial different therapies and combinations and see which works best for her.

“Would you like to try UVB light therapy? It can be very helpful in getting psoriasis under control.” Sehun lets her have her arm back and pushes his chair back a little, lifting his face to look at her. Eunkyung doesn’t need to think long before nodding.

“I’d do anything to get this to go away. It's so gross.” Sehun can tell how much it’s getting to her, and he doesn't blame her. Having a skin condition on the face, where it can be seen by everyone, is a distressing thing to happen to anyone.

“We’ll find a therapy that works for you,” he says, as reassuringly as he can. He stands up and walks over to the shelf where he keeps patient information brochures on many different kinds of therapy, finds the one on phototherapy and hands it to her.

“I’ll schedule your first session sometime this week and we'll continue treatment twice a week until it clears up. After that you can decide if you want to continue with UVB or if you want to try going back to topical treatment.”

Eunkyung nods, clutching the pamphlet close to her chest like a lifeline as she bows her thanks. She leaves his office to book her first session with the receptionist, and Sehun sits back down at his desk and updates her journal on his computer. A couple of minutes later he glances up at a knock on his door, expecting to see the receptionist, Haneul, but the woman that peeks inside is not Haneul.

“Hey, Dr. Oh,” she says. Sehun jumps up, crosses the room in two steps and pulls her inside, wrapping his arms around her. She giggles and pushes against him, but Sehun doesn’t let go until he starts hearing irritation in her protests.

“Mikyung, what are you doing here?”

Mikyung grins at him. “Taking my favourite doctor for lunch so I know he’s getting some actual food in that stomach of his.” She peeks around his body and her gaze locks on the empty coffee cup next to his computer. “It’s a good thing I came to visit this week. You would have withered into nothing if I’d left it any longer.”

Sehun grabs her shoulders and pulls her back in front of him so she can’t get a good look at the giant mess that is his desk. “Sounds great. Let’s go.”

He steers her out the door and shuts it behind them, then takes her hand and links their fingers. Mikyung had gotten an unexpected couple of days off mid-week and decided to spend them with him in Seoul, not even minding that he had to work and couldn't get time off at such short notice. He hadn't realised just how empty he'd been feeling until she'd come back, filling his life with warmth and light, making even the bleak December weather seem brighter. She’s leaving for Busan again tonight and they won’t get to see each other again until Christmas, but Sehun doesn’t want to dwell on sad thoughts while she's still beside him.

Mikyung pulls him towards the elevators and together they find their way to the ground floor. It’s only when she’s about to tow him through the grand entrance and right out of the hospital that Sehun remembers he’s still wearing his doctor’s coat.

“Babe,” he says, stopping in his tracks. She turns around and sends him a quizzical gaze, but when he gestures at his coat she starts laughing.

“Oh, right, I forgot. Still at work,” she says, and pulls him back towards the cafeteria instead. She’s only been here a couple of times but she already acts like she knows the place better than he does. Sehun is perfectly happy to follow her around like a puppy. He doesn’t even care if he looks like a lovestruck idiot. Being in a long-distance relationship is way harder than he ever imagined it would be.

They stand in line, looking at the food on display and the menu in the background. Mikyung talks about the differences between Seoul and Busan and how much she misses a good pyeonsu, and Sehun listens to the sounds her voice makes without really hearing the words. Force of habit has him ordering his usual black coffee, but a sharp elbow digs into his side. Mikyung glares at him from underneath her bangs.

“Scratch that. He’ll have kalguksu,” she tells the cafeteria staff member.

Sehun pouts. “How am I going to get my caffeine fix now?”

Mikyung snorts and pulls him towards the pick-up area. “I know you think chain-drinking coffee is all you need all day, but this is why you’re always burning your tongue on your ramyun when you get home because you’re too hungry to wait for it to cool.”

“I know, I know, I'm useless. You should stay longer and look after me.” He picks up the tray with their food and leads her towards a table. Mikyung sits down opposite him with a sigh.

“You know I have to get back to the Ilbo,” she says. She reaches over the table and gently runs her fingers over his knuckles. "You could always move to Busan if you need me to feed you that badly." She grins at him, then pulls her hand back and starts eating.

Sehun watches her eat, his own food forgotten in front of him, half-listening as she chatters about meeting up with a friend this morning. She makes it sound so simple when she says it like that, but moving to Busan would not be easy for him. He was born in Seoul and has never lived anywhere else. His friends are here, his family is here, his life and job and everything he knows is here. Uprooting it all is a scary thought. Seoul has everything that has made him the person he is. Everything except Mikyung.

When he'd told his parents Mikyung was moving cities for work, they'd said she shouldn't have gone. That if she was serious about him she wouldn't prioritize her career over his. Sehun had been unable to hide his anger, and things have been strained between them ever since. They're old-fashioned. They don't understand. The news and entertainment industry is very competitive and jobs are hard to come by. Mikyung has done so well getting permanent employment. Why shouldn't she follow her dreams? Why should she stay in Seoul when she was stifled here? He doesn't get why his parents think her career is less important than his. It still makes him a little angry to think of it.

He's pulled out of his moody thoughts when Mikyung waves her hand in front of his face.

“Hello?” she sings. When he blinks, she reaches over to grab his chopsticks and puts them in his hand. "Eat.”

Sehun obediently starts eating, but he hasn’t gotten far when he notices the time displayed on the large wall clock. He drops his chopsticks. “Damn, I have a patient in 5 minutes. I have to get going."

Mikyung groans. “Typical. I can’t believe I dragged you out to lunch only for you to barely eat anything.”

“It’s okay." Sehun smirks. "I can get coffee from the break room in the clinic.”

Mikyung throws her hands into the air. “I give up!”

She comes back up with him to the dermatology floor and walks him to the clinic rooms. The hallway is empty, so Sehun catches her wrist before she can turn to leave and leans down to kiss her.

“Meet me at the entrance when I get off,” he says. He starts to turn back towards his office, but Mikyung catches onto his shirt. She lays her head on his chest for a few seconds longer, then turns her head to look up at him, her chin poking into his sternum.

“Be nice to your patients,” she says.

Sehun gives her a wounded look. “When have I ever not been nice to my patients?”

“Oh, I don’t know, when you dig bloody chunks out of them and send the photos to your poor, long-suffering girlfriend?”

Sehun promises he will not send her any photos of today’s biopsies, and she stretches onto her tiptoes to kiss him again. He holds her hands as they pull apart and only lets go when his fingers can’t stretch more. He watches her walk away down the hospital corridor. Despite the fact he knows he’s going to see her again in a couple of hours, loneliness tugs at his chest. When he finally turns around, he finds Haneul smiling gently at him from behind the reception desk.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Five years,” Sehun tells her, rubbing his neck apologetically. He hadn't realised she was there. “Sorry about that. Mikyung moved to Busan recently for work, so we’re a bit clingy when we get to see each other.”

The smile lines around Haneul's eyes deepen. “You look very sweet together,” she says, then reaches over to answers the ringing phone. Sehun goes back into his office, unable to control his smile.

The afternoon goes by far too slowly. He sees a couple of teenagers with bad acne, a woman with rosacea, another couple of patients with severe psoriasis like Eunkyung, and a case of melanoma. He exercises great self-restraint with the melanoma biopsy and doesn’t send a photo of it to his long-suffering girlfriend. Every time he finishes a patient, he feels a little more excitement bubble to the surface, because he is one patient closer to Mikyung.

At 5 pm, Sehun jumps out of his chair and hangs his doctor’s coat behind the door before hurrying out of the hospital in record time. Mikyung is waiting for him. He finds her waiting just outside the entrance. When she sees him she skips towards him, and Sehun can't resist lifting her up and spinning her around.

“We should not be doing this in public,” she laughs as he puts her down again. Sehun runs his hand along her hair, trying to style it back into what it had looked like before he had spun her around, only for a gust of icy wind to mess it all up again. Mikyung grins and pulls closer to him. “It’s cold out here," she says. "Let’s go."

Sehun puts his arm around her shoulders and leads her towards the car. He has reserved a table at a restaurant near the train station so they can spend as much time together as possible before she has to catch the last KTX.

“Where are we going?” Mikyung asks once they're in the car and out of the wind. Sehun chuckles but doesn’t answer, turns the keys in the ignition and looks over his shoulder to navigate out of the narrow parking spot. Mikyung rubs her fingers against her thighs and closes her eyes as the heat of the car envelops them. When he's safely on the bigger main roads, he removes his scarf and drops it in Mikyung’s lap. She wraps it around her fingers and buries her nose in it.

“You changed your aftershave.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Mikyung wrinkles her nose. “You totally did! This doesn’t smell of you,” she accuses. Sehun laughs at how indignant she sounds.

“I literally just took it off, who else could it possibly smell of?”

Mikyung smells it again. “There’s something different about it.”

Sehun indicates a right turn towards Seoul Station. “Maybe it’s because it doesn’t smell of your perfume anymore?”

Mikyung turns to stare at him, mouth dropping open. “You’re right!” She pulls it against her face again and inhales deeply. “Mmm, it smells of _man_.” Sehun cracks up, nearly losing focus on the road. Mikyung doesn’t seem fazed by his amusement at all. It’s not until Sehun stops in front of Tokkijung Project that she stops breathing in his scarf and turns to him.

“We’re eating here?”

Sehun shuts the car engine off. “It’s near the station so we can stay longer. Give me my scarf back.”

Mikyung hugs his scarf closer to her and leans close enough for a kiss, but stops just short of his lips.

“No,” she whispers, pulling back and opening the car door. Sehun blinks as she gets out with his scarf in her hands and turns back to giggle at him. He gets out too and shuts his door. “Give it back, it's freezing!"

Mikyung just sticks out her tongue and starts running towards the entrance of the restaurant.

“Mikyung!” Sehun pulls his coat a little closer as he hurries after her.

Their table is near the front but it’s still warm so they shed their coats. Mikyung still won’t give back his scarf no matter how much he whines, and eventually Sehun gives up, letting her have the victory. It’s one of the things about her that Sehun got attracted to in the first place. He loves that he can tease her and that she gives as good as she gets.

The atmosphere in the restaurant is calm and homely. Sehun finds himself getting lost in thoughts. Mikyung talks about her love for Japanese food as she looks at the menu, but he isn’t really listening, just looking at her and wishing she wasn’t leaving in a couple of hours. He can almost hear the wall clock’s mocking countdown to when he’ll be alone again.

He blinks when he feels a stinging pain on his wrist. A small red mark forms where she has flicked her fingers to pull back his attention.

“Your order, babe?” She nods towards the waitress standing next to their table. The waitress shifts her weight and sends him a smile that does little to mask her obvious irritation. Sehun opens his mouth, then closes it again. He hasn’t even cast a glance at the menu.

“I'll have what she's having.” He waves towards Mikyung with a lazy hand. Mikyung catches it and links their fingers.

“What makes you think I ordered something you like?”

Sehun looks at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I ordered _insects_ ,” Mikyung says gleefully.

The waitress heaves a long-suffering sigh and turns to leave.

“Sure you did." Sehun smirks. "Like you of all people would ever eat insects. You can’t even stand to see insects, not even cute ones like that giant moth right behind you.”

Mikyung screams and drags their linked hands closer as she twists around in her chair, rocking the table. Sehun grabs the pitcher of water before it can fall over, snickering when Mikyung turns back around to glare at him.

“Oh Sehun, you are dead meat.”

Sehun bites down on his lip to stop himself laughing. He hangs his head contritely, peeping up at her from under his fringe.

Mikyung narrows her eyes. "Oh no you don't. You can't defeat me with the cute attack," she says, but Sehun can see her lips are already fighting a smile. Before long she's laughing, and Sehun lifts his head again triumphantly.

Their food is served not long after and Sehun reluctantly lets go of her hand so they can eat. If they had been at home, they would have eaten with their hands linked, fooling around as they tried to cut meat and scoop up noodles with one hand only. Mikyung proposes they spend Christmas in Busan (“it’s warmer in Busan, Sehun, and we could catch a wave!”) and Sehun promises to think about it. They’re going to spend it just the two of them either way, so it won’t make a big difference where they are. They debate whose family to spend New Year's Eve with (“your mom makes better food, Mikyung!”) and time flies.

At half past nine, Mikyung raises her hand for the bill. It's time to make their way towards the station. The reality of her leaving makes Sehun feel like he's been doused with a bucket of ice water. His mind starts to drift into sadness again while she talks to the waiter. When they've finished paying and step out into the cold, Mikyung catches his wrist to stop him walking on.

"You've gone all quiet," she says, reaching up to finally return his scarf. She wraps it around his neck, and there's a question in her eyes as she looks at him, a hint of worry.

Sehun sends her a reassuring smile and reaches out to take her hand. "I'm fine."

The train station isn't far, so they walk. They're halfway there when little snowflakes start falling around them. Mikyung stops and looks up into the sky with wide eyes and parted lips. Sehun pulls her gently away from the middle of the sidewalk so that they're not blocking other passers-by. The road is busy and there are glowing advertisements for beauty products and canned coffee on buildings around them, but with the snow falling, it all somehow feels magical. Mikyung lets go of his hand and turns to wrap her arms around him. Sehun doesn’t hesitate to pull her closer.

“It's not fair. I miss you already and I'm still here,” she whispers into his shoulder. Sehun leans down and presses his lips against hers. They’re cold and a little chapped, but it doesn’t matter. When they pull apart, Sehun tries to smile reassuringly at her again, but somehow, this time he can’t quite manage it.

“I don't want you to go," he says. His voice comes out more broken than he'd expected. Mikyung looks up at him, brows creased into a worried quirk, so he continues quickly. "But I know you have to. Sorry. I'm just being silly."

Mikyung bites her lower lip, then takes his hand again. She leads him through the settling snow towards the train station in silence. Sehun tries to get a grip on himself. To be long-distance was a decision they made together, and he can't go back on it now. He has tried to be stoic about it, but the longer they're apart, the more his resolve to be mature about their separation seems to crumble. He wants to cling to her like a small child and beg her not to leave.

But he has to be strong. He doesn't want her to see how much he's hurting. He has no right to stop her from following her dreams, nor does he want to. He wants her to be happy, and that means not making her worry about him or feel guilty. It means showing her that he's okay on his own, that he's a mature, fully-functioning adult who can look after himself just fine, who can handle a long-distance relationship just as well as she can. It means waving her off with a smile and pretending he doesn't feel the cold chains of loneliness wrapping around his ribcage and slowly tightening.

They enter the train station and go through to the platform without speaking. The train is already waiting. Mikyung turns to him and smiles, taking both his hands and swinging them a little.

“I’ll text you when I get back home,” she says. Sehun nods, biting back the childish plea that wants to spill out of his mouth. _Don't go._

“I love you,” he says instead. “Take care.”

Mikyung smiles. “Eat real food until I see you again,” she says. “I love you too.”

The large clock on the platform informs them there are only five minutes until departure. Mikyung lets go of his hands.

"I better get on."

“Where are you sitting?”

Mikyung looks at her ticket, then points to a window. “Around there, I think."

She doesn't say goodbye, just checks her bag briskly and boards the train without looking back, leaving him standing on his own on the platform. She always does this when they part, like she's ripping off a band-aid instead of prolonging the pain. Sehun shoves his cold hands deep in his pockets and watches the window she pointed out. Before long he sees her behind the glass, waving at him and pursing her lips in a kiss. As the train slowly pulls away, Sehun starts to walk, then jog alongside. He can see Mikyung laughing at him through the window, but the train quickly gathers speed and he can’t keep up for long. He reaches the edge of the platform, out from under the sheltering roof, and stops, watching the string of lit-up carriages fade into the night.

He's still watching the darkness long after it's out of sight. Snowflakes land in his hair and the icy air stings his cheeks, but he doesn’t notice the cold. There's something clawing at his chest. It's all he can do not to cry.

He doesn't know how much longer he can keep doing this. It feels like being torn apart. Every single time.

He can't keep on letting her leave him, but nor can he ask her to stay.

He stays on the empty platform for a long, long time, throat tight, eyes aching as he stares into the night.


	11. December 13th

The smaller of the two lecture theatres on the ground floor of the hospital is narrow but high, six rows of ten seats each rising above a low wooden platform and lectern. Jongdae climbs the shallow steps up to the third row, taking the seat nearest the central aisle so that he can get out easily. He tugs nervously at his tie as he glances around the room. It's not too tight, but it still feels like it's constricting his throat.

He judges the lecture theatre to be less than half-full, perhaps around 20 people interspersed through the tiered seats. Some of them are staff surgeons who have been randomly selected across the hospital disciplines, while the rest are junior residents, interns and medical students attending voluntarily for the educational aspect. A low murmur fills the room as the assembled doctors and students talk amongst themselves and wait for the chief of staff to arrive.

Jongdae has dressed more carefully than usual today, the tie paired with a fine cashmere sweater and pressed slacks instead of the open-collared shirts and jeans he prefers. He has run a handful of holding cream and a comb through his hair, lifting his bangs away from his forehead instead of letting them fall down in tousled waves the way they usually do. It makes him look a little more mature, or at least he hopes it does. He gets mistaken for a medical student often enough as it is, and today he doesn’t need any of his esteemed colleagues getting the impression that he’s too young and inexperienced to know what he’s talking about. When Ahreum had gotten the chance to glance at him between trying to get the kids to sit at the table, behave and eat their breakfast that morning, she had tilted her head and smiled.

“You look smart, love,” she’d told him. “What’s the occasion?”

Jongdae had mumbled something about attending a day conference and escaped before she could ask for details. He doesn’t want to lie to her, but he also doesn’t want to talk about this particular conference. She'd worry if she knew he had to speak publicly, and even more if she knew what he had to speak about, and he just doesn’t want to go there. Not with Ahreum, not with his family. He’s always promised himself that he would never bring work problems home, wouldn't let them see when he was stressed or anxious. He wants to always show them a smiling face and keep the darker sides of being a doctor away from them. So far, he thinks, he has succeeded.

Jongdae's usual way of getting through work problems and stress is to go and whine to Chanyeol or Baekhyun. His two best friends have always let him get whatever-it-is off his chest before things get too bad inside his head. They're usually great about teasing him out of it, helping him put things in perspective and bringing his spirits up and out of whatever state of anxiety he's stressed himself into. The problem is that lately, his support system is falling apart. Chanyeol has been so ill with measles that Jongdae wouldn’t dream of worrying him, and Baekhyun has gone so strangely distant and unfriendly lately that Jongdae just hasn’t felt comfortable bringing up his troubles. He's decided he'll just have to grow a spine and get though it on his own this time, but he hadn’t realised quite how hard keeping everything to himself would be.

The cause of today's particular stress arrived via email at the start of the week. The email had informed him that his most recent patient death, Min Jisook’s ectopic pregnancy, had been selected for this month's Morbidity and Mortality conference, and that as the surgeon in charge of the case, he would be required to present it for analysis and discussion.

Jongdae has never had a case selected for Morbidity and Mortality before. He’s attended a few over his career, mostly as an assistant when he was an intern and doing rotations in things like general surgery and cardiology where patient deaths are more common, and a couple of times as one of the randomly-selected staff surgeons who are supposed to discuss the presented cases. The idea of the monthly conferences is to analyse unexpected or unusual patient deaths, go over the decisions made at each step in the patient’s care, and identify any errors that may be able to be prevented in future. It’s not intended to point fingers or assign blame to the doctor in charge of the case, but it’s almost inevitable that that’s how it feels. Jongdae has always felt a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. He was relieved that it was unlikely he’d ever be in the firing line, given that unexpected patient deaths in obstetrics and gynaecology are so rare.

At least, rare until now. Jongdae’s three deaths in the past three months have already skewed his department's statistics. His chief is not happy with him at all. He probably should be thankful that only one of his cases has been selected.

He has one hand in the pocket of his white coat, fiddling mindlessly with the USB stick he saved his slideshow onto. Nerves are crawling up and down his limbs, jumping sickeningly in his stomach. He's glad he escaped the house before Ahreum had a chance to make him eat breakfast. He's always had trouble with public speaking in general, and today it's going to be worse than usual; he will have to relive Min Jisook’s death all over again and defend the decisions he made to a room full of mostly much older and more experienced doctors. It is not going to be easy.

He looks up as the chief of staff enters and walks briskly to the lectern. Dr. Oh Yohan is a tall, distinguished nephrologist with swept-back silver hair and a craggy face. He greets the assembled doctors and students and taps the laptop set up on the lectern to project the agenda onto the screen behind him. Three cases will be covered at today’s conference, and Dr. Kim Jongdae, Obstetric Surgeon and Gynaecologist, is to present first.

Jongdae stands up, walks down the couple of tiers to the front of the lecture room and steps up onto the slightly raised platform. He slips his USB into the laptop and concentrates on the screen as he pulls up his slideshow, trying not to notice how quiet it is, trying not to think about how many people are watching him, trying to ignore his stomach twisting itself into knots. He has listed all the information he needs in bullet points on the slides, so there is no reason to worry that he will forget something important, but rationality isn’t helping his nerves.

His confidence has taken such a blow over these cases. When he went through them afterwards, he never found anything he could have done better, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything. It's impossible to know absolutely everything, even when you specialise. He's afraid there will be something he missed, or some error of judgement he made. He's afraid that his patient’s lives could have been saved if a more experienced, more skilled surgeon than him had treated them. He's afraid that he is negligent, or incompetent, or both, and he just never realised it before.

He opens his mouth to start his presentation, but his throat has gone so tight that not a single sound comes out. A wave of stress and extreme embarrassment washes over him. He coughs and swallows, trying to get his throat to relax enough to let him speak. He fixes his gaze on the first slide on the laptop screen rather than out at the audience, trying to pretend they’re not there. It’s impossible. Even directing all his focus at the screen, he can still sense the pressure of all their eyes, watching him sweat.

He coughs one more time and tries again to speak, and this time, to his immense relief, his voice works. He keeps his eyes fixed on the laptop screen and begins to read out his points mechanically.

“A 22-year-old female was brought to the emergency department after collapsing at home. She had suffered acute abdominal pain for several hours and on presentation to the ED was found to be haemodynamically unstable.” He is careful not to mention Min Jisook’s name, as patient confidentiality still applies. “According to the patient’s boyfriend there was no known pregnancy and she was experiencing menstrual bleeding. Considering the patient’s age, gender and symptoms, the ED team ordered a pregnancy test and an acute ob-gyn consult. Pregnancy was confirmed and I diagnosed a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a medical emergency in need of immediate surgical treatment.”

He continues to explain every step he had taken, why he had declined waiting for a CT scan, how on exploratory surgery he had discovered the ruptured ovary and why he had decided to remove it. His throat is still so tight it's physically painful to speak, and he has to stop talking and cough several times when his voice gives out. He wishes he had thought to bring water.

He tries to keep his face calm, but he knows by the shifting atmosphere in the room that the other doctors can tell he’s struggling. Some are sending him encouraging or sympathetic looks. Others seem uncomfortable, or scornful, or impatient. His stress becomes so acute that he starts to feel light-headed. He puts one hand surreptitiously on the lectern to try and hold everything steady.

He explains how Jisook arrested, and the steps he went through in his attempt to resuscitate her. His voice gets slowly quieter and quieter until it eventually fades out completely. The room goes distant as the desperation he'd felt in the OR comes back to him. He'd stopped the bleed. He'd fixed her. He just had to get her heart started...

“Dr. Kim?”

He comes back with a jerk. The chief of staff is watching him, an inscrutable expression on his craggy face. With a flash of sheer panic, Jongdae realises he’s just completely blanked out in front of the whole room.

Where was he? He looks back at the screen, finds his place, and resumes describing the resuscitation. He has to take an over-long pauses between every sentence to inhale and exhale shakily, but eventually, finally, he makes it through. By then his whole body is trembling. He clasps his hands together in front of him, praying that nobody can tell.

Chief Oh keeps him standing there while he leads the discussion. First they discuss whether Jongdae should have ordered a CT scan. There’s a half-hearted argument between a couple of the staff surgeons about whether the delay in waiting for a CT scan would have been counteracted by Jongdae being able to go directly to the ruptured ovary, but this line of thought is abandoned when the radiologist present joins in. He points out that the time needed for the patient transport and preparation, the CT scan itself, and the radiologist's reading of the images adds up to longer than it had taken Jongdae to find the rupture via surgical exploration.

“My techs prefer not to have patients arresting in the CT scanner,” he says drily. Jongdae looks up at this, and belatedly realises that the doctor speaking is Kyungsoo. The radiologist sees him looking and sends him a smile. It’s not often that Kyungsoo smiles, and Jongdae feels a slight reassurance from it.

Dr. Bae, the anesthesiologist who had been present during the surgery, stands up next. She reminds them that on opening the abdomen the resident and intern had drained two and a half litres of semi-coagulated blood from the abdominal cavity, which in essence meant the patient had already lost too much blood to easily recover from before Jongdae even started the surgery. After that there are no more points raised, and Dr. Oh finally allows Jongdae to leave the stage.

Jongdae makes his way unsteadily back to his seat and sits down. His mouth is so dry it feels like he’s been trying to eat sand. He loosens his tie and closes his eyes, taking slow, controlled breaths in an attempt to relax his muscles and calm his clenching stomach. He barely hears the second presentation begin.

His thoughts drift to Min Jisook again. He’s kneeling on the OR table, leaning his whole body into the chest compressions. He’s looking at the monitor showing the wriggly v-fib rhythm, then the flat asystolic. He’s feeling her boyfriend’s fist slamming into his eye, knocking him to the floor. He’s hearing his furious words. _You killed her._ Unconsciously his fingers go to his face, drifting along his cheekbone where the last traces of faint yellow bruising linger. He almost wishes the bruise had lasted longer. He feels like he deserves it.

He sits quietly through the other two cases, the words of the other doctors filtering through without leaving much meaning behind. He should be relieved that nobody disagreed with his decisions or found anything wrong with what he did, that nobody has found a way to blame him for the death of his patient, but somehow, it doesn’t help. No matter how rationally he tries to talk himself through in his mind, the emotions are still there, refusing to let him explain them away. Whether he did right or wrong, his patients are still dead. He was the surgeon. The delicate porcelain of their lives were placed in his hands, and he dropped them.

The rustle and buzz as everyone starts to stand up and move towards the door, talking as they go, tells Jongdae the conference is over. He leans forward in his seat, elbows on knees, and rubs his hands over his face. The nerves and acute stress have receded by now, leaving him feeling utterly drained, and it’s only 10 am.

The sense of someone pausing nearby makes him take his hands from his face and look up. Kyungsoo is standing on the step beside his seat, staring down at him with his usual hooded gaze.

“Hi, Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says, making a valiant attempt at his usual smile. “How’s it going?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t answer. He just sits down in the seat across the narrow walkway and looks at Jongdae through his thick glasses. Jongdae tries to figure out what the radiologist is thinking, but just as he has decided to break the silence and ask, Kyungsoo finally speaks.

“Tough presentation, huh?”

Jongdae gives a small laugh. “Aren’t they all? Public speaking isn’t exactly my strong point.”

Kyungsoo just keeps watching him, and Jongdae gets the sudden impression that the small radiologist is seeing right through him, as clearly as his X-ray machines see through a patient's body.

“And, I guess, the case itself wasn’t the easiest thing to talk about,” he admits.

“It’s never easy losing people, is it?” Kyungsoo's voice is very calm, but the understanding in it touches Jongdae.

“No,” he says quietly. “It isn’t. That girl was so young. She didn’t even know she was pregnant. I can’t stop wondering if there was something more I could have done.”

“There were no errors in your process or decisions,” Kyungsoo says. His eyes flick up to meet Jongdae’s for a brief, rare second, then away again. “Sometimes shit just happens.”

Jongdae nods. “I know. I do know that, but…” he trails off, sighs. He doesn't know how to explain further. There’s not really anything more to explain. Kyungsoo is right. Sometimes shit just happens.

They sit in silence for a while, until Jongdae finally shakes his head and pulls himself together. He summons up a smile to send at Kyungsoo. “I'm okay, really. Thanks for listening.”

The radiologist just shrugs, but that’s just Kyungsoo being Kyungsoo, and it makes Jongdae smile a little more genuinely. They go their separate ways, Kyungsoo disappearing back into the radiology department and Jongdae heading up to the ob-gyn floor, where a string of outpatients await him.

\---

The old colonial building looks incongruous to Minseok, crammed as it is between two modern skyscrapers, with four lanes of traffic rushing past on the busy road. The oak-slab door creaks when he opens it, and he steps into a cold, tiled entrance hall with a ceiling several stories high. It smells of ancient polished wood and history, and Minseok feels strangely like he’s just walked into the late 19th century. This place probably hasn’t changed much since it was built, back when the country was still called Joseon. He walks down the long hallway, feet echoing on the tiles, glancing at the polished metal plates beside the doors that lead into the private practice suites operating out of this building. A periodontal surgery, a dermatology clinic, a family chiropractor. He stops when he reaches one that says _GreenLine Psychology. Licensed professional counselors Wu Yifan, M.A. & Ryu Changwook, M.A._ He reads the sign twice before twisting the gold doorknob and pushing it open.

The reception area is wood-paneled and carpeted in a deep shade of green. Dark leather couches form a waiting area with a mahogany table in the middle. It’s dim and cool, and Minseok wonders if they planned it that way; it’s certainly a calming environment compared to the bright lights and white walls he’s used to. A receptionist sits behind a high desk in the same dark mahogany and doesn’t look up from her computer as he enters. Minseok clears his throat, and she lifts her face to look at him through narrow glasses.

“I have an appointment with Wu Yifan,” he says. “Kim Minseok.”

Her long nails click away on the keyboard and what feels like forever goes by until she nods and points towards the couches.

“Take a seat. He’ll be with you in a moment.”

He sits on the nearest leather couch and tries to relax. The only sounds in the empty waiting room are the ticking from the wall clock and the rapid clacking of the receptionist typing behind the reception desk. It feels eerie. He looks around, trying to focus on something other than the fact that he’s here to see a therapist. He doesn’t really know what he has gotten himself into, just that Kyungsoo recommended Wu Yifan and if he doesn’t see a therapist Jangmi will try and take his girls from him. He’s not convinced he’ll get anything out of this, but he’s going to try regardless. He can’t lose Nayoung and Eunbi.

Ten minutes later a tall, broad-shoudered man steps out from the narrow hallway Minseok assumes leads to the clinic rooms. Sharp dark eyes under severe eyebrows scan the waiting area without expression. He looks intimidating, and Minseok finds himself hoping this is Ryu Changwook, not Wu Yifan. The idea of Kyungsoo playing computer games with this man seems surreal; the idea of him fainting at the sight of blood even more so.

“Kim Minseok?” The sharp eyes lock onto Minseok as he says his name. Minseok wipes suddenly clammy hands on his jeans as he stands up. The closer the man gets, the taller he seems.

“I’m Wu Yifan,” he says, and holds out a hand to shake.

Minseok forces himself to take the hand and shake it firmly. He won't be intimidated. There’s nothing wrong with being here. It’s not like he even really needs to be. He just needs to prove to Jangmi that he’s trying.

The room Yifan leads him into is decorated in the same style as the waiting area, all antique dark woods and black chairs. Minseok sits down in the chair Yifan gestures to and looks around. Next to the wall clock hangs a framed certificate from Seoul National University, awarding Wu Yifan his master’s degree in psychology. There’s a tall bookshelf filled with psychology texts, and Minseok sees more English and Chinese titles than Korean. Yifan sits down in the chair opposite him.

“Please call me Yifan, if that’s comfortable for you,” he says. “May I call you Minseok?”

“Minseok is fine,” Minseok says. “A colleague of mine recommended you - Do Kyungsoo?”

To Minseok's surprise, Yifan’s face lights up, breaking into a smile. He suddenly looks a lot less scary, and Minseok is relieved. Maybe Kyungsoo’s old gaming buddy is hiding in there after all. “Ah, Kyungsoo! I haven’t seen him in a long time,” he says. They talk briefly about how Minseok knows him and about the radiology and emergency departments at the hospital. When this topic comes to a natural close, Yifan gives Minseok a more direct look.

“So,” he says, and pauses.

“So?” Minseok repeats blankly. The doctor/patient setting takes over and his brain automatically starts looking for signs of physical health in the man opposite him. It always bothered Jangmi when he did this, but he can’t just turn it off. It comes with being an emergency physician for so many years.

“What would you like help with?” Yifan breaks the silence. Minseok blinks, remembering that he is the patient in this scenario. It feels so wrong. He hates this. He looks towards the clock to see how much time he has left before he can go back to being the doctor, but there’s still at least 40 minutes left. Yifan just waits patiently for Minseok to answer.

“I don’t…” Minseok starts, and catches himself. He does need help, or at least Jangmi thinks he does. “According to my ex-wife I’m a workaholic.”

“Okay," Yifan says. "And do you agree with her?”

Minseok sighs. "Not really, no. I mean, I am an emergency physician, so naturally I work a lot, but I like working. I don't think it's a problem."

Yifan lifts a questioning eyebrow. Minseok can almost see the way his mind is breaking down Minseok’s words and looking for what hides behind them.

“If you don't think there's a problem with the amount of time you spend working, what made you decide to come and see me?”

“My ex-wife wants me to work less," Minseok says. "She says I need to be more present for our children. She told me to see a therapist and fix my issues, or she'll sue me for custody. I don't want to lose my daughters -” _too_ , he chokes back the last word just in time, stopping with a jerk.

Yifan nods. “Alright, let's start there. Why did you and your ex-wife divorce?”

He’s probably expecting an answer revolving around work, Minseok thinks. A lot of doctors wind up with failed marriages, but in his case, his career had nothing to do with their divorce. He doesn't often get asked this question so directly, and the few times it has come up, he's just said _we had differences we couldn't resolve._ But that's not what Yifan wants. He needs to know the truth so he can help Minseok keep custody of his daughters.

As Minseok tries to figure out a way he can answer honestly but without letting the emotions that come with speaking the words aloud rise up from where they're safely locked away, a bead of cold sweat slowly makes its way out of his hairline and down his temple. He shivers. The air seems to go thick and heavy around him, and his eye twitches.

“There was...an accident,” he manages to say. His voice sounds weirdly distant. He feels strange. Disoriented. He can see Yifan's mouth forming words, but he can't hear them through the blood rushing in his ears. The box he keeps tightly shut and pushed to the darkest corner of his mind by working, working, always working and never letting himself _think_ bursts open, and Minseok stops seeing the room around him. He stops seeing Yifan, stops hearing his blood rushing, stops feeling his heart pounding. Minseok stops being aware of the present at all.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, a sea of papers and journals spread out in front of him. The blinds are open to let in the summer afternoon light, and a bright patch of sunlight falls onto the pages of the latest Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology. The attending left Minseok with a patient before he got off of work yesterday whose infection isn’t responding to normal antibiotics, and he has a feeling it’s because it’s not an ordinary infection. He puts the Canadian journal down and rubs his eyes for a second, then picks up the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Therapy.

A delighted squeal from his right penetrates his concentration. He glances at the youngest of his three children, strapped into the high chair beside him. Eunbi has gummed her celery stick into a fibrous mess and is now gleefully pounding it into the tray of the high chair. He removes the gooey remnants of the vegetable with a grimace and drops it into the sink, then hands her a fresh celery stick. She grabs it and shoves the end into her mouth, and Minseok pats her head and goes back to his journal.

He’s only halfway through his next article when a small fist grabs his pant leg and pulls to get his attention.

“Ask mommy, Nayoung. Daddy’s busy,” he tells his three-year-old daughter. He assumes she’s obeyed when it goes quiet for the next couple of minutes, but the pattering of small feet soon tell him Nayoung is back.

“Mommy says to ask daddy.”

Minseok holds back a sigh. “Jangmi, can’t you help Nayoung?” he calls.

“You know I have an important case to prepare,” she shouts back from the office. “See what she wants.”

As if he isn’t busy as well. Minseok’s patients are just as important as Jangmi’s clients. He would sigh, but he doesn’t want Nayoung at his side to misunderstand and think he’s annoyed with her. It’s not her fault both her parents are snowed under with work at the moment. He casts a quick glance at Eunbi to make sure she’s still happy in the high chair, then turns his full attention to his middle child.

“What is it, Nayoung?”

Nayoung sticks out her lower lip and points silently in the direction of the hallway. Minseok presses his fingers to his aching temples. “Use your words, sweetie.”

“Ilsung won’t play with me."

Minseok looks towards the open door of the living room where he’d set up the train set for them earlier, but can’t see his five-year-old son with his limited view into the room.

“Ilsung, play with your sister,” he calls. Nayoung shakes her head and pouts harder.

“He’s sleeping,” she says. That grabs Minseok’s attention.

“What? Is he in bed?” he asks. Ilsung shouldn’t want to be in bed in the middle of the afternoon. Is he sulking because he doesn’t want to play with Nayoung?

“No,” Nayoung says. “He’s sleeping on the floor and he won’t wake up.”

Minseok jumps up so fast the chair topples over with a crash. He rushes into the living room, suddenly, horribly aware that he hasn’t heard his son’s voice in quite some time. He should’ve known quietness was a sign of something bad. The living room is empty and he spins around.

“Ilsung? Ilsung!”

Nayoung has trailed him to the doorway. She points down the hall.

“Daddy, he’s in our bedroom.”

Minseok half-leaps over her in his haste to get through the door and down the hall. The bedroom door is nearly closed. He shoves it open and takes a step inside.

Ilsung is lying motionless on his back in the middle of the floor. There is a plastic grocery bag wrapped tight around his head. A bolt of white horror strikes Minseok, so great it almost fells him. It almost chokes his heart out, sends him blind and reeling. Then he’s somehow across the bedroom without even knowing how he got there, on his knees, tearing the plastic bag off Ilsung’s head.

“Nayoung, get mommy now!” he shouts. ABCs, his mind directs, strangely calm through the panic response. He tilts Ilsung’s head back to open the airway, then checks for breathing. He is not breathing.

Minseok feels detatched, like he is watching himself perform CPR on his son from somewhere slightly above. It’s like he’s floated up from his own body and his reactions down below have gone on autopilot. 27, 28, 29, 30 compressions, lean down and breathe twice into the mouth.

“What's going...oh my God -" It's Jangmi's voice behind him.

“Call 119,” Minseok orders without glancing up, without stopping compressions. Halfway through the next round, Ilsung takes a shallow breath. Minseok stops and assesses him. Ilsung’s chest rises and falls shallowly, not enough to fill his lungs. It’s only a matter of time before he stops breathing again, but Minseok has no medications at home to combat this. He hears a child crying. Nayoung. She is standing by his shoulder. Without thinking he reaches out a hand and pulls her towards him.

“Nayoung, go into the kitchen and stay with your sister, okay? Be a good girl and do that.”

He kisses the top of her head and sends her off. She’s still crying as she leaves the room.

When Ilsung has been breathing on his own for two minutes, Minseok carefully lifts him into his arms. He stands up, turns, and finds Jangmi in front of him. Her face has gone rigid and drawn.

“Is he -”

“He is breathing now. When are the paramedics coming?”

“Five minutes.”

Minseok carries Ilsung into the living room and sets him down on the floor. Jangmi fusses about it, keeps on asking him to place Ilsung on the couch so he can lie comfortably, but Minseok ignores her. He can’t perform CPR effectively on the couch and he can’t think well enough to explain it to her. He can only act.

Ilsung stays stable during the short ambulance ride, but there’s still no sign of life except the shallow breathing and the beating of his heart. When they reach the hospital Ilsung arrests, and Minseok is denied access to the trauma bay. He goes into the waiting room and sits down on a chair, and the world goes grey and distant around him. Other people might hope, at this point. They might not give up. They might pray for a miracle. But Minseok is an emergency physician. He already knows the outcome of this.

A couple of hours later the doctors confirm it. They have Ilsung on life-support, but he is brain-dead. He was without oxygen for too long. There is no hope of recovery. He will never wake up.

There is only one thing they can do.

Minseok holds his son’s cold hand. He looks wordlessly at Jangmi. She is crying silently, tears pouring down her cheeks without any sobbing. Minseok reaches out for her, but she jerks away. Minseok’s arm drops to his side again as Jangmi stares at him through her tears. There is something awful in her eyes. Something Minseok has never seen there before.

He turns away, back to Ilsung’s body.

Minseok is cold. He is so cold, but Ilsung is colder.

Grief breaks over him like a tidal wave, and he is swept away on it, and is lost.

“Minseok?”

Minseok blinks. His eyes stop seeing his son’s body and find a clinic room, a shelf full of psychology texts, a person looking at him. He blinks again, heavily disoriented as his head turns to stare at the man who is calling his name. Yifan.

“Minseok, are you with me?" Yifan asks when their eyes meet. He looks mildly concerned.

"Yes," Minseok says. The grief he works so hard to push down and hide away is rebelling, surging up inside him, threatening to crash over him and crush him. He clenches his fists by his sides and with gritted teeth he forces it all back down. He cannot let it win. He will not let it win.

"Could you tell me what you're feeling right now?”

Minseok feels sick, that's what he feels. He blinks, and realizes his eyes are moist. Damn it. Then Yifan’s question fully registers. Can he tell Yifan what he's feeling? No. No, he can’t do that. He can’t. He can't risk reliving all that again. He'll be lost. It will destroy him.

"I'm sorry," he says, standing up. "I have to go."

Yifan starts to say something, but Minseok has already spun around and is out of the door before he can let himself listen. He finds his way out of the building and makes it a couple steps down the road before he comes to a sudden stop. He gasps in a breath, almost doubling over with the grief punching at his gut. The icy air burns in his lungs and tears start to drip down his cheeks. He swipes them away from his face with an angry hand and forces himself to stand upright. No. He will not do this. This has no place in Minseok's life. He will control it. He must.

He needs to get back to work.

\---

The ED is busier than usual that afternoon. A group of young medical students wait for Minseok in the entrance area, excited to get their first glimpse of an emergency department before they start their shadowing rotations in January. In hindsight, Minseok should have known that scheduling his first session with a psychologist on the same day as he's supposed to be showing students around was a bad idea. The head nurse, Aecha, knows immediately something is wrong, but Minseok brushes her off when she asks. He's managed to tamp everything down again, but it's still fragile, and he's afraid even a casual question will break his flimsy barrier. He can see by the way her brows furrow that she's worried, but he ignores her and turns to greet the students.

The kids talk in hushed voices as he introduces himself and starts to show them around. As they walk, he goes over the most common injuries and illnesses they will meet in the ED, asks them if they have learned how to suture yet, and introduces them to some of the residents as they work. When they get around to the nursing station, he stops and asks if there are any questions.

“Will we get to shadow a doctor?” one student asks.

“Not today. You’ll shadow when you come back next year and when you become interns you’ll get a lot more hands-on. Today is just an introduction.”

They nod and murmur around him and another student raises her hand.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

Minseok flashes back to Ilsung again and bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. He thinks of the more extreme and gruesome cases, the ones they really want to hear about.

“A patient came in two months ago with a steel rebar impaling his heart,” he says. That had halted the entire ED to a stop when he’d been admitted.

The students look impressed. “Did the patient live?”

Minseok nods and describes Joonmyun's brilliant surgery for them. He'd watched the rebar removal, then come back when he'd gotten off shift to see him finish. The unwavering focus Joonmyun had kept up for the entire time was truly incredible. The students look suitably awestuck, turning to one another to discuss someone surviving an injury that would seem to be immediately fatal. Minseok watches them, starting to feel a little better. Perhaps they’ll be good doctors one day.

“Dr. Kim!” He turns at a breathless voice calling him. Nurse Han runs up, pointing back towards one of the smaller rooms. “Dr. Mae,” she says, panting a little. “Dr. Mae is about to prescribe penicillin to a patient who is anaphylactic.”

“Then stop her,” Minseok says sharply, wondering why she’s wasting time telling him this instead of dealing with the issue. Anaphylaxis is not something to mess about with.

“I tried,” Nurse Han says. “But she won’t listen to me. You know, I’m just a nurse, what do I know. The allergy is in the patient’s chart, but Dr. Mae probably hasn’t even read it.” She narrows her eyes and thins her lips. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Minseok draws her a few steps away so they’re out of earshot of the students.

“What’s not the first time?”

“Dr. Mae has a reputation between nursing staff of not bothering to read the charts. She just believes whatever the patients tell her. Certainly doesn’t believe us,” Nurse Han tells him.

A surge of anger boils up inside Minseok. He almost welcomes it. Anger drives away the remnants of his pain.

He follows her towards the examination room, Nurse Han voicing her frustration as they go, telling him about the other times Dr. Mae has ignored her or the other nurses. When they get there, Minseok stops in the doorway and forces himself to speak calmly.

“Dr. Mae, could I have a quick word with you?"

The younger doctor looks up confidently until she notices Nurse Han hovering behind Minseok. Then her lips go thin.

“Can it wait a moment, Chief? We’re almost done here.” She turns back towards her patient and starts instructing him on how to take his penicillin. Minseok clears his throat and enters the room. Nurse Han stays in the doorway.

“Sir," Minseok addresses the elderly gentleman on the exam table. "Do you know if you are allergic to penicillin?"

The patient looks from one doctor to the other, prescription in hand. He nods slightly. “I think I had an allergic reaction when I was a child,” he says raspily.

Minseok looks meaningly at Dr. Mae, who starts to stutter as she tries to find an excuse. Minseok holds up a hand to silence her. He is not here to listen to excuses. Excuses mean nothing when she just prescribed a medication that could kill this man.

“What happened back then, do you remember?” he asks the patient. The gentleman gives him a kindly look and starts to explain that he was only four years old back in 1949, so he has no memory of the incident apart from what his mother has told him. He goes off on a tangent about what the world was like back in those days. Minseok pulls his chart up on the computer in the meantime and turns the screen towards Dr. Mae. In big bold letters it says CAVE: Penicillin (Anaphylaxis). Dr. Mae goes a little pale.

Minseok turns back to the patient, slips expertly into a pause for breath in his rambling story, and prescribes doxycycline instead. The gentleman seems a little confused with everything that has happened in the short timespan since Minseok entered the room, but accepts the new prescription without complaint. It’s not a good look to just take over another physician’s case like this, but Minseok isn’t in his best mood and the mistake could have been fatal. It also bothers him that his resident didn’t listen to the nurse. Maybe Kyungsoo was right when he called the ED residents arrogant. Why has nobody come to him about this issue before?

When the man has been sent on his way, Minseok turns back to Dr. Mae. Nurse Han slinks out of the room and closes the door behind her.

“He didn’t say he had a penicillin allergy,” Dr. Mae blurts out before he can say anything.

“Did you ask? Because when I asked, he certainly admitted to it pretty quickly.” Something shifts in Dr. Mae’s eyes and Minseok catches onto it before it disappears. This is not going to be a pleasant conversation.

“He probably told you because you’re a man,” she says, fixing him with an almost accusing gaze.

Minseok feels a headache coming on. He does not want to deal with this.

“We've already established that you didn't check the chart. Why didn’t you listen to Nurse Han when she checked it for you?”

"I'm a doctor. She's a nurse," Dr. Mae says, as if this should be self-evident.

Minseok wants to bang his head against the wall. He really can't cope with this today. They’ll have to have a more serious conversation in his office another day, when there aren't dozens of patients needing to be seen, when he’s more prepared to deal with this shit.

“I'm going to send you a meeting invite," he says, and turns to leave. "We'll talk about this more at a better time."

He walks towards his office. His head is pounding now and he knows he has some aspirin in his desk drawer. Today has been more draining than a busy night shift or a 48-hour call shift. He's only halfway there when his pager goes off, a first year resident wanting a consult on a kidney failure patient. Minseok stifles a groan, rubs a couple of quick circles into his temples in the vain hope of staving the headache off a little, and hurries off to give the consult.

\---

Jongdae falls asleep on the subway home, his head dropping back to rest against the window despite its hardness and the swaying rattle of the train. His subconscious must have been keeping track of the station announcements, because he jerks awake when his station is called, and only just manages to collect himself and scramble off the train before the doors close. He grimaces as he makes his way up the steps to the street level. The stress must really be getting to him.

Outside his apartment door he pauses for several long seconds, pushing away all thoughts of mortality conferences and dead patients and finding the way to his smile. It is much, much harder than it should be, but he gets there eventually. He can hear Chorong and Bodeul through the door, their voices raised to nearly shrieking pitch, though he can’t quite make out the words. Please don’t be fighting, he pleads inwardly. Please just be playing.

He opens the door to a warm waft of air that brings with it the familiar smell of frying pajeon. The scallion fritters are one of the few vaguely healthy foods all three kids will eat, so pajeon is on the menu rather more often than anything else. The shrieking of his oldest two children doubles in volume and he closes the door behind him quickly. He’ll have to put a stop to this or the neighbors will stick sarcastic notes to the front door again.

He slips off his shoes and turns around to find that the short corridor leading into the main room of the apartment has turned into a knee-high maze of plastic water bottles, toilet rolls, alphabet blocks, stacks of books, Duplo, and a myriad other random objects. He hesitates, staring in bewilderment at the mess, and as he does so Chorong and Bodeul skid into sight at the other end of the hall.

“Daddy, daddy!” they shriek, hopping up and down excitedly. “You have to get through the maze!”

Jongdae holds back a weary sigh. He knows they’ve probably spent all afternoon creating this maze especially for him. They’ll be anticipating his reaction.

“Wow, what a great maze," he says, trying to inject some life into his voice. “I bet you two worked hard on it.”

His kids nod and beam at him, and despite his weariness and his longing to just fall onto the couch and sleep for a week, the sight of their smiling faces can’t help but lighten his mood. At least they’ve stopped shrieking, he thinks as he starts to shuffle gingerly through the twisting paths. Being built by kids, the paths are very narrow, and it takes some care not to knock anything over.

“I’m the minotaur in the labyrinth, and I’m coming to get you,” he sings as he gets close to the end. They back away, giggling, and when he leaps over the last wall of alphabet blocks and pretends to pounce on them they turn and sprint away with shrieks of laughter. He lets them go and walks into the kitchen, dropping his backpack onto one of the chairs at the table. Ahreum is pouring the last of the pajeon batter into the frying pan, and Jongdae notes with some relief that there is also rice and a mixed vegetable dish cooking for the adult members of the family. He’s getting rather sick of pajeon.

Mari is under the table driving toy cars around, and when she sees his feet appear she toddles out and holds up her arms. Jongdae picks her up and swoops her above his head, making her giggle, before sitting her on his hip and leaning in to kiss Ahreum on the cheek.

“Oh, hello darling. I didn’t hear you come in." Ahreum turns her head and smiles at him. She has a streak of white flour from the pajeon batter across her forehead. “How was work?”

“Fine,” Jongdae says quickly. “How was your day? Kids behave?”

She groans. “They’ve been so noisy this afternoon. I was going to take them to the park after school and kindergarten and let them run their energy off, but it was raining too heavily.”

Jongdae winces sympathetically. Rain days are the worst when you have three kids under six years old. Chorong goes to taekwondo three afternoons a week, which usually tires her enough to bring her down to a manageable level, but the other two afternoons are always wild, and Bodeul is starting to match her energy levels.

“Should we start Bodeul at taekwondo too?” he asks. “He’s old enough for mini-kids now.”

“Maybe,” Ahreum nods. “It would help his discipline too. He’s starting to really push boundaries.”

The truth of this statement becomes apparent to Jongdae during dinner. They have a strict rule of “no distractions” at dinner time, as it’s one of the few times the whole family can be together, at least when Jongdae isn’t on call or working a night shift. That means no TV, no electronic devices and no toys at the table, and the kids aren’t supposed to leave their chairs until they’ve received permission. They all know the rule, even little Mari, and usually they obey it, but over the last few mealtimes Bodeul has been testing them. He stands up on his chair, dances on it, gets down from it and tells Jongdae cheekily that he’s still touching it with one finger when he reminds him to stay on his chair. Today he goes a step further. Ten minutes into the meal, the four-year-old abandons his half-eaten dinner and runs back into the living room, where he starts playing loudly with the farm animals, looking back over at the table with a gleam in his eye that shows Jongdae that his son knows exactly how naughty he is being.

“Daddy! Bodeul isn’t sitting at the table! He’s playing! It’s not fair!” Chorong whines.

Ahreum shushes her, and Jongdae calls to his son. “Bodeul, come and sit at the table, please.”

Bodeul gives him an utterly mischievous glance and goes back to playing. Jongdae breathes in slowly, lets it out, and gets up to take him by the hand and lead him back.

"Sit down and behave," he says firmly.

Bodeul sits down and behaves for about 30 seconds before he's out of his chair and running into the lounge again. Jongdae rubs a hand wearily over his face. He really doesn't want to spend the whole meal playing this game. Why can't the kid just behave?

“Bodeul,” he calls. “It’s dinner time, and we sit at our chairs at the table during dinner time. Come back, please. You can play with the farm again after dinner.”

Bodeul jumps up, but instead of coming back he runs and hides behind the sofa.

“Bodeul is being very naughty, isn’t he, daddy?” Chorong asks, looking rather smug about the fact that she is being good and staying at the table.

Jongdae really wants to agree with her, but he resists the temptation.

“Bodeul -"

“I’m not coming!” The voice issues from behind the sofa.

All the frustration and stress Jongdae has been suppressing surges up inside him, and in an instant, he snaps. He stands up and screams across the apartment so loudly the words seem to tear at his throat.

“KIM BODEUL, GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW AND FINISH YOUR DINNER OR YOU ARE GOING STRAIGHT TO BED!”

There's a ringing silence. Ahreum, Chorong, and even little Mari are staring at him with identical shocked expressions. Bodeul appears from behind the sofa. He comes running over, his face as shocked as theirs. This is completely out of character for Jongdae. They’ve never heard their father yell.

Jongdae sits back down as Bodeul climbs onto his chair and starts tearfully stuffing food into his mouth. Before long he’s sobbing, still trying to eat, and Ahreum moves her chair over and tries to console him. Chorong and Mari watch Jongdae silently, something like awe in their big, round eyes. Jongdae sits there just as quietly. He is utterly stunned by his own outburst. What just happened? Where did that come from? He’s not an angry person. He doesn’t yell.

He remembers how he blew up at those two interns in the OR a couple of months back. That had shocked him too, but he’d thought it was a one-time thing, an emotional outburst because he’d just lost a patient and wasn’t quite coping with it. But now he’s done much worse. Yelling at interns is one thing - they’re adults, if young ones, and they have the emotional maturity to deal with it. But screaming like that at his four-year-old son, who was doing nothing worse than playing with his toys instead of eating? How could he do such a thing?

A sickening mixture of horror, guilt and shame curls up inside him. He has to force himself to swallow his rice. He looks at Bodeul’s distraught face, the tears pouring down his cheeks despite all Ahreum can do to comfort him, and feels like an utter bastard.

The rest of the meal is eaten in silence, until Chorong finally asks in a small voice if she can get down. Ahreum excuses her, then turns to Mari, lifting her down from her booster seat.

“I’ll get the girls ready for bed,” she says. She sends him a meaningful look, then glances at the still sobbing Bodeul. Jongdae knows what she wants him to do, and he seizes the idea gratefully.

He goes over to the fridge and gets out two of the little cups of fruity yoghurt that the kids love so much. He sits down beside Bodeul, putting the cartons on the table, one in front of each of them. He opens the tops and puts a small spoon into Bodeul’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

Bodeul sniffs, tears still glistening in his eyes, but he takes the spoon and dips it into his yoghurt. Jongdae puts his hand on his shoulder. “I know I scared you,” he continues. “Sometimes grown-ups sound angry when they’re really tired, or worried about other things. I was tired and sad because of something that happened at work, so when you weren’t listening to me and weren’t following the rules, it made me more cross than I should have been. But yelling isn’t the right thing to do even if I’m tired or sad. Daddy was wrong to yell.”

Bodeul nods, but still doesn’t say anything.

“Do you understand about the dinner table rules?”

He nods again.

“How about I promise not to yell at you again, and you promise to try very hard to stay on your chair at dinner time? Does that sound fair?”

Another nod. Jongdae looks at his son worriedly. Bodeul is not the most confident child, and he’s usually a good, quiet kid. It’s only lately that he’s been testing them, and it’s completely normal for a four-year-old to do so. It’s actually a good thing, given that Bodeul is naturally shy. Has Jongdae just destroyed all the new-found confidence his son was growing? He feels like the worst father ever.

“I love you so much,” he tells him. He wipes the tears away from his face with his hand. “You’re my own little boy, and I’ll never stop loving you no matter what you do. You know that, right?”

Bodeul looks up at him with a quivering lip and gives another tiny nod. Then he looks at Jongdae’s untouched yoghurt on the table. His hand creeps towards the second spoon. For a second, Jongdae thinks Bodeul wants his yoghurt too, and is about to tell him he can have it, but then Bodeul pushes the spoon into his hand.

“Daddy's sad,” he says in a tiny voice. "Daddy needs dessert to feel better too."

At that, Jongdae nearly joins his son by bursting into tears.

But he doesn't, of course. Instead he smiles and eats the yoghurt with the most delicious noises he can summon up while Bodeul watches. He doesn’t laugh the way he usually would when Jongdae does this, but at least he isn’t crying any more. After a while Ahreum comes back in to take Bodeul and get him ready for bed. She looks a little stern when she glances at him, and Jongdae almost feels himself shrink to the size of Bodeul.

He clears the table and loads the dishwasher while his wife goes through the bath-and-bed routine. Then he goes into the hallway and starts wearily clearing up the “maze”. When everything is tidy - or at least, tidy enough that he won’t break his neck trying to leave in the morning - he goes towards the kids’ bedrooms. Chorong is sitting up in bed reading one of her Rainbow Fairies books to herself, and he comes in and kisses her goodnight. Ahreum is settling Mari, so Jongdae goes into Bodeul’s room. His son is ready for bed, wearing his favourite unicorn pyjamas. Jongdae had looked askance at the unicorn pyjamas when he’d first seen them, until Ahreum had teased him for conforming to gender stereotypes.

“Shall I read you a story?” he asks. Bodeul’s face lights up. He runs over to his bookshelf and pulls one of the picture books out, then jumps into bed and wriggles over into his pile of stuffed toys so that Jongdae can sit next to him. Jongdae gets into the bed next to him, props Bodeul’s pillows up to support his back and pulls his son close to his side. Bodeul’s warm little body snuggles into him, and Jongdae realises for the millionth time just how lucky he is to have these three little bundles of joy. They may be hard work and trying at times, but the love and light they bring to his life are something he can’t imagine living without.

“How the Whale got his Throat,” he reads the title, and yawns as a wave of tiredness washes over him. He blinks hard, opens the book and turns to the first page.

“In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved,” he reads, “there was a Whale, and he ate fishes...”

His eyes are trying to close on their own. His voice fades out and his head starts to nod.

“Daddy?” Bodeul tugs at his sleeve, and he jerks awake. He turns the page.

“All the fishes he could find in the sea he ate with his mouth - so!”

He pretends to bite at Bodeul’s nose, making him giggle.

“Till at last there was only one fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ‘Stute fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, to be out of harm’s way…”

Jongdae’s voice drifts off again. Do whales even have ears, he wonders vaguely. They do sing, so he supposes they must have some kind of hearing organ, but it must be different than in land mammals. They wouldn’t need an external ear. Perhaps some kind of opening...with some way of preventing the water from getting in…

Jongdae is swimming just behind the right ear of a huge silvery whale in a deep blue ocean. The whale’s ear sticks out in a way that reminds him a little of Chanyeol, so it’s easy to swim behind it because it blocks the current of the water…

“Daddy?” Bodeul asks again, but this time he gets no response. He looks up at his father. The picture book has fallen from his hands, his eyes are closed and his head has flopped back against the wall. Bodeul gives a long-suffering sigh and shakes his head the way mommy does when daddy falls asleep on the couch every time they watch TV.

He wriggles out of his father’s limp arms and stands up on his bed. There isn’t space for Bodeul if daddy’s going to sleep here, not with all the stuffed toys as well. Bodeul tugs at the duvet until he’s got it pulled up further over his father’s legs, then studies his pile of stuffies. Which one would daddy like to sleep with? Bodeul likes the unicorn with the rainbow tail best, but he’s pretty sure daddy’s favourite animal are dinosaurs, so he digs out his purple stegosaurus from the pile and tucks it carefully under his father’s arm. Giving a satisfied nod, Bodeul climbs down from his bed and patters lightly out into the living room. He can’t sleep in his bed with daddy there, he rationalises, so he might as well go back and play.

He’s quietly organising the farm animals into a row based on their size, tallest to smallest, when mommy comes in from putting Mari to bed.

“Bodeul?” she asks. “What are you doing up?”

Bodeul looks up at her seriously. “I think I’ll have to sleep in here tonight.”

“Oh, really? Why is that?”

“Daddy’s asleep in my bed.”

\---

Jongdae is woken from dreams of swimming with the whales by Ahreum shaking his shoulder. Bodeul is holding her hand and staring at him a little reproachfully. There’s something soft under his arm, and he looks down to find that he’s cuddling a purple stegosaurus. He regards the creature with some bewilderment.

“You can’t sleep here, darling,” Ahreum tells him, and he’s relieved to find that the severity has gone from her face and she’s looking at him fondly again. “Let poor Bodeul have his bed back.”

Jongdae gets up and apologizes to Bodeul for stealing his bed. He gives him a goodnight hug and kiss, promising to finish the story another night when he can stay awake, then goes into the lounge and flops down onto the couch. He turns on the TV, flicks to the main news channel and tries to take in what the anchor is reporting, but it isn't long before his eyes are drifting closing again.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Ahreum is suddenly sitting beside him. She puts her arms around him and leans her head on his shoulder, looking up at him with her gentle dark eyes. “Something’s wrong, isn't it? Won’t you tell me?”

He smiles at her softly, lifting his hand to smooth the strands of hair back from her face.

“How could anything be wrong when I have you?” Jongdae loves her so much. He loves them all so much.

“No, don’t put me off,” Ahreum says. “What happened at dinner - that’s not like you. It’s not the first time Bodeul has misbehaved like that, and you’ve never yelled at any of the kids before.”

“I’m just a little tired, that’s all,” he says, as reassuringly as he can. “I’ll be fine when I’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

“Did something happen at work?”

How is she so perceptive, he thinks.

“No, love. Everything’s fine.”

"Oh, Jongdae..." Ahreum sounds so sad that it makes his heart clench. She rests her head on his chest and strokes her fingers down his arm. "I wish I knew how to get through to you."

Jongdae closes his eyes. He's not doing well enough. He's showing through the cracks, and she can tell. He has to do better.

She doesn’t push him any further. Instead she changes the channel to a drama she’s been watching, snuggling into him the same way that Bodeul did. Jongdae tries to pay attention to the drama, but he’s missed the last few episodes and has no idea what is going on. Before long, his eyes have closed again and his head drifts sideways to rest against hers as he sleeps.


	12. December 23rd

Soft snowflakes are falling from the dark sky as the hospital opens its doors to the annual staff Christmas party. The big conference room on the ground floor has been decorated for the occasion and a large Christmas tree in the corner is laden with baubles and wreaths. Carols are playing over the speaker system, and the hospital staff gather together to wish each other a merry Christmas.

Chanyeol walks in with a pretty woman on his arm. They match each other, not only in their outfits of red velvet tuxedo and red silk dress, but also in their long, lanky builds, huge sparkling eyes and goofy ears. Chanyeol always brings his big sister to the annual Christmas party. It’s the best way to avoid questions about relationships, and to forget that he can't walk in here with Yeonseok on his arm the way he secretly wishes he could.

He quickly spots Jongdae and his wife near the Christmas tree. It looks like Jongdae is trying to get their eldest daughter to keep her hair bow in. She shakes her head wildly and Jongdae winces, but the temper tantrum he seems to expect doesn't manifest. Chanyeol leads his sister towards his friend. As they get close, Jongdae and Ahreum light up in welcoming smiles. Chorong knows him too, as he's babysat for Jongdae's kids several times. She bounces on the balls of her feet excitedly as she waves at him.

Chanyeol hasn’t spoken to Jongdae about Yeonseok yet. His boyfriend told him about confirming to Jongdae what Chanyeol had unwittingly blurted out in his fever-addled state. Chanyeol still feels faintly horrified when he thinks of it, though he's more horrified at his own feverish self than at Yeonseok for not denying everything. Outing himself in such a way really wasn't in his plans for the near future. He’s grateful Jongdae hasn’t brought the subject up. His friend treats him just the same as he ever did, and it's a huge relief. Chanyeol supposes he wasn’t being fair to Jongdae, who has always been a wonderful friend, to fear otherwise, but then, fear isn’t always rational.

“Chanyeol! Merry Christmas!” Ahreum hugs him. She's a good friend as well; Jongdae and Ahreum have been together since before Chanyeol met him in their first year of university. “Are you feeling better?”

"I'm pretty much recovered now, thanks," he tells her. "Never get measles though, seriously. It really sucks."

Ahreum laughs. "It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, by all accounts," she agrees. Chanyeol nods fervently, then turns to Chorong and sends her a big smile.

“Look at this beautiful princess!” he exclaims. Chorong beams and spins around to make her skirt fan out, and Chanyeol claps delightedly. Chorong's happiness soon turns to a pout as her hand goes back to tug at her hair bow.

"Mommy, I hate it," she whines. "It pulls."

"Okay," Ahreum sighs. "Hold still." She takes it out and passes it to Jongdae, who puts it in his pocket. Chorong's hair falls loose onto her shoulders, but she looks a lot happier.

“Who’s the pretty lady?” Chorong turns her wide eyes towards Yoora next.

“I’m Chanyeol’s big sister,” she tells Chorong before any of the others can answer.

Chorong's mouth drops open as she stares from Yoora to Chanyeol and back again, like the idea of him having a big sister is mind-blowing.

"Chanyeol is bigger than you, though," she points out. Chanyeol snickers and pokes Yoora in the side.

"Yeah, I'm bigger," he repeats.

Yoora shoots him a look, then crouches down to whisper something in Chorong’s ear. Chorong's eyes go round as she looks back up at Chanyeol, and then they both start giggling.

"What?" Chanyeol pouts, but the girls ignore him. Big sisters suck, Chanyeol decides for at least the ten-thousandth time as he turns back to Jongdae and Ahreum.

❆❆❆

In the opposite corner, Mikyung tugs at Sehun’s sleeve. He turns from making small talk with a colleague as she points towards a laughing group of people near the Christmas tree. Sehun looks at them too, but can’t figure out what it is she wants him to look at.

“What?”

Mikyung keeps her gaze locked on the group. “That’s Park Yoora, right?”

Sehun looks again. Park Yoora? Is that a name he should know?

“Um...who?”

Mikyung sighs. “You know, Park Yoora, the news anchor!”

No, Sehun does not know Park Yoora, the news anchor. He rarely watches the news. When he finally gets home, he doesn’t want to be bombarded with the terrors of the real world or the latest gossip; he just wants to relax with a couple of manhwas and forget the world exists. He gives her a sheepish smile and a shrug.

“Come on," Mikyung grabs his hand and starts to pull. "If it's really her, I have to say hello!”

Sehun hurriedly says goodbye to his colleague as she drags him across the room. He doesn’t mind. He’s just happy she’s here with him. Tomorrow they'll leave for Busan and celebrate Christmas at her house there, just the two of them.

As they get closer, Sehun recognises the people standing with the woman who might be Park Yoora, the news anchor. He knows Jongdae through work and Chanyeol through Baekhyun. Mikyung drags him up to the group and shamelessly asks the woman if she’s the news anchor. When Yoora smiles and says that she is, Mikyung lights up as bright as the Christmas tree beside them and says passionately how much she loves Yoora's work, then launches into her own job description.

Sehun feels himself going shy. Mikyung doesn’t get embarrassed no matter who she’s talking to, but Sehun never knows what to say when he meets new people outside of the controlled doctor/patient setting, famous or not. Luckily Mikyung is talking enough for both of them. He curls his toes inside his shoes and glances suspiciously from Yoora to Chanyeol and back again. A couple of moments later Chanyeol notices him doing it and laughs at him.

"What you're thinking is right. She's my sister," he says. "We're not twins, though. I know we look like we could be."

Sehun grins, trying to hide his embarrassment at being caught. Jongdae smiles at him understandingly and introduces him to his wife and daughter.

“Greet Dr. Oh politely,” he reminds the little girl. Chorong complies, bowing from the waist, then straightening up and staring fixedly up at him. Sehun gives her an awkward smile. "Uh, hi," he says, trying not to panic. Why is she staring at him like that? Is that normal for kids? Is he supposed to talk to her or something? What on earth can he talk to a six-year-old about? Children are definitely not his strong point.

Jongdae's wife comes to his rescue, putting her hand on Chorong's shoulder so that the girl breaks her stare and looks up at her mom instead. “How do you know my husband?” she asks.

“We’ve been to a few seminars together,” Sehun explains. “I’m a dermatologist and our specialties sometimes overlap. We consult for each other occasionally too.”

Jongdae agrees and supplies stories of a couple of cases they’ve worked on together, and Mikyung breaks her conversation with Yoora to express her disgust at being at the receiving end of all the interesting skin lesion photographs Sehun sends her. "I haven't managed to teach him yet that there is such a thing as over-sharing," she says, elbowing Sehun.

Ahreum laughs at that, but her smile fades as she looks back at her husband. She looks strangely wistful, but Sehun has no idea why. Surely she doesn't want close-up photographs of Jongdae's cases.

"It could be worse, you know," he says reasonably. "I could have been a gynaecologist."

Ahreum and Jongdae both snort with laughter at the look of sheer horror that dawns on Mikyung's face.

❆❆❆

Ahreum has fallen deep into discussion with Mikyung and Yoora, something to do with misogyny in politics, and Jongdae, Chanyeol and Sehun find themselves discussing the new e-referral system. They spend an enjoyable ten minutes whining bitterly and commiserating with each other about how horrible it is to use, and then Chanyeol asks Sehun about a colleague Jongdae doesn't know. He detaches a little from the thread of conversation and sweeps his gaze around the room. He's been keeping an eye out for Baekhyun, but has still seen no sign of his other best friend. It's strange. Baekhyun is usually the life of any party, always easily located by his clowning around and contagious laughter.

Jongdae looks back at Chanyeol and Sehun. “Have either of you seen Baekhyun yet?”

Chanyeol shakes his head, and Sehun shrugs. Jongdae hesitates, wondering whether it's appropriate to ask the other two if they've noticed something different with Baekhyun, but Chanyeol gets in before he has to make the decision.

"Don't you guys think Baekhyun's been acting a bit weird lately?" he asks, in what is probably meant to be a quiet voice, but it's not easy for Chanyeol's deep voice to achieve what most people would call quiet.

"Yeah, actually," Jongdae says. "I was wondering whether to ask you. I feel like he hasn't been quite right since that day he was feeling unwell at lunch, but he brushes me off every time I try to ask. Did you ever find out what was bothering him?"

Chanyeol frowns. "When was he...ah." Memory dawns on his face. "Right. That was the day I came down with measles. Geez, I forgot about that. No, he never said anything."

"It's weird for him not to be here," Jongdae says. He looks at Sehun for his input.

Sehun just shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe he's on call? I mean, some of us have to keep the hospital running."

"True," Jongdae says, a little doubtfully.

Their discussion is interrupted by a girl who looks about ten years old running up to them, her full attention on Chorong. Jongdae has been sensing Chorong getting increasingly restless listening to the adults talk, and as soon as she sees the older girl approaching her eyes go big and interested.

“Excuse me,” the girl says, looking hopefully around at the gathered adults. “Can I play with her?” She points at Chorong, and Chorong’s face lights up.

“Oh yes yes mommy, say yes,” she begs, turning wide eyes up to her mother. Jongdae would have given her permission instantly with those eyes. He’s simply too weak to say no to that expression. Ahreum, however, isn't quite such a pushover. She smiles at the girl but keeps her hand on Chorong’s shoulder.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asks. "Are you here with your parents?"

The girl widens her eyes, obviously realising she has forgotten her manners. She bows politely.

“My name is Kim Nayoung.” She straightens up and points back across the room. “That’s my dad over there, with my little sister. She was too shy to come ask.”

Jongdae follows her pointing finger to where a small-statured man is talking to another staff member. A younger girl is clinging to his arm and watching them shyly across the room. Understanding lights up in Jongdae and he turns back to nod at Ahreum, noting surprise on both Chanyeol and Sehun's faces as they realise who Nayoung's father is.

“Her father is Dr. Kim Minseok," he says. "He's the chief of the emergency department. I’m sure Chorong will be safe." He smiles down at his daughter. "You can play with Nayoung and her sister if you want to."

Chorong wrestles out of her mother’s grasp and slams her body into his legs, arms wrapping around his waist. Chanyeol grabs Jongdae's shoulder steadyingly as he staggers. She is really getting strong enough to topple him when she does this, Jongdae thinks ruefully as Chorong lets go again.

"Thanks, daddy!" she squeals. She takes the hand Nayoung stretches out towards her and is towed across the room to Minseok and his younger daughter.

“I had no idea Dr. Kim had children.” Chanyeol sounds astonished.

“He’s divorced," Jongdae says. "I think his daughters live with their mom." He doesn’t mention the third child Kyungsoo told him about, the son who died. That’s not his story to share.

❆❆❆

Minseok watches his daughters nervously to make sure they aren’t destroying the decorations or tipping over the large tree. This is the first time he's brought them to a work event and he’s not certain how they’ll behave. Jangmi hadn’t been happy when he’d asked to have them to stay with him for a few days during the Christmas holidays, but she’d given in when he’d told her he’d done as she asked and seen a therapist, giving her Wu Yifan’s business card to prove it. He'd kept judiciously quiet about the fact that the session was disastrous and that he hasn’t been able to face making a second appointment, so Jangmi had reluctantly handed the girls over, along with a list of their rules and boundaries. The list is all things like bedtimes, limited screen time, tidying up after themselves, 45 minutes of cello practice daily for Eunbi. Minseok has been blithely ignoring all the rules, despite knowing that it’ll come back to bite him when Jangmi doubtlessly finds out. He finally has the girls to himself for a few days. He doesn’t want to waste it by being strict.

He’s breaking the bedtime rule into smithereens by bringing them to the party tonight. The girls had been ecstatic about getting to see where their dad works and dress up in their party dresses, but it's an event Minseok usually uses for networking, and trying to monitor two overexcited little girls while he does so is more stressful than he'd anticipated. He'd even bought a game of Uno specially for them to play if they got bored, but when he told them in the car on the way here, he’d gotten exasperated sighs and rolled eyes. According to them, they’re too old for Uno. Minseok hadn't known it was possible to be too old to play Uno, but he didn’t bother arguing. He can't win an argument with his daughters any more than he can with his wife. It must come from being brought up by a lawyer.

He’s distracted from watching them play with Jongdae’s daughter when Kim Songmi approaches him, pulling her husband along by the hand.

“Merry Christmas, Dr. Kim!” Songmi says joyfully. Yixing just gives him a dreamy smile, looking like his mind is a million miles away. Minseok can't help smiling to see it. It's so typical of Yixing to be spacing out in the middle of a bustling social event.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Songmi," he returns her greeting. It's odd for him to see her in a pretty dress instead of nursing scrubs, her hair loose over her shoulders instead of tied back. "Just call me Minseok," he says. "We're not at work, even if this is still the hospital."

Songmi looks utterly delighted. “Oh, you're going to wish you never said that. You’re never getting out of being Minseok now,” she laughs.

Minseok smiles, slightly taken aback, but not displeased. “If you think you can handle the informality back in the ED, go right ahead," he says. He doesn't mind being addressed informally as long as people are still respectful, but the nurses always give him his full title as a matter of course, even when he's known some of them for over ten years.

Yixing reaches out and links his fingers with Songmi's, still appearing more than half-zoned out. Songmi gazes at her husband, eyes soft with love and understanding, and Minseok suddenly feels very alone.

He blinks himself hurriedly out of the feeling, then staggers as someone launches full-tilt onto his back and latches long slim arms around his neck. Minseok barely keeps his balance as Eunbi's excited face pokes over his shoulder.

“Dad, can we have the Uno game?”

Minseok grins. “I thought you were too old to play Uno.”

Eunbi gets that stubborn look in her eyes. It's a carbon copy of Jangmi’s, and Minseok recognizes it instantly. He has been on the receiving end of the look many times, in situations both good and bad.

“We're going to teach Chorong how to play. She’s only six, you know.”

Minseok only just manages not to laugh. He can tell Eunbi wants to play the game too, but her stubbornness won’t let her admit it. He fishes the game out of his pocket and hands it to her. She drops off his back and flies back towards Nayoung and Chorong, waving the game in the air triumphantly.

“You have a daughter?” Songmi's surprise is evident in her voice.

Minseok turns back to face her, a conflicted feeling tangling in his chest. He's never actively hidden the existence of his children, but it's certainly not common knowledge among his staff. He just avoids talking about his personal life at work. That way he never has to satisfy curiosity or answer questions that cut a little too deep. Bringing the girls here was bound to attract attention, of course. He doesn't regret it, but he does wish he could somehow avoid conversations like this without being rude.

“Two daughters, actually,” he says, nodding over at the three little girls who are now sitting cross-legged in a circle in front of the Christmas tree, setting out the card game on the floor. “The older two over there.”

Songmi has a hundred questions in her eyes, and Minseok's heart sinks. This is exactly why he doesn't talk about his personal life. He braces himself for the obvious question that comes next - who or where their mother is - but to his relief, a commotion nearby steals her attention. They turn towards a cluster of nurses cooing and talking loudly. Songmi pulls her fingers out of Yixing's and goes to investigate. Minseok glances at his friend, and finds that Yixing seems to have returned from whatever planet he's been on for the entire conversation. He looks at Minseok with quiet understanding.

“She’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow,” he says gently.

Or perhaps, Minseok thinks, Yixing has been paying more attention than anyone all along.

❆❆❆

Joonmyun tries not to hover too obviously over his wife and three-week-old son, but he can tell he's not doing a great job at being discreet. They're surrounded by a cluster of nurses who have noticed the adorable baby and come to coo at him. Yejin doesn’t seem to mind the fussing around her and proudly shows Yejoon off to all and sundry. Joonmyun is proud of his baby son as well, but he just gets so nervous when people come close. Yejin had wanted to come and support him at the Christmas event like she's done all the years prior, and she'd been adamant that it would be fine to bring Yejoon, but Joonmyun is starting to wish he'd just blown the whole function off and stayed at home, where he can keep them safe.

The nurses are full of praise. Yejoon has such a healthy complexion; he’s so curious; his eyes are so intelligent. Yejin beams with pride, while Joonmyun has to force back panic when yet another nurse hurries up to join the growing group. Too many, there's too many people surrounding them, he can't keep track of them all.

“Do you want to hold him?” Yejin asks one of the scrub nurses on Joonmyun’s team. Joonmyun bites back a cry of protest. His anxiety spikes as his wife hands Yejoon over, pulse speeding up and fingers twitchy. It's not that he doesn't trust the nurse. She assists him capably on the most complicated heart surgeries, and her hands are always sure and steady. It's just that whenever he looks at his son, all the things that could possibly go wrong go racing through his mind without rhyme or reason, and he can't seem to figure out how to make them stop.

Yejin slips her hand into his and strokes a finger gently over his knuckles. She's noticed his anxiety. Joonmyun tries to calm down. He's aware that he's being ridiculous, but he can't help it. There are so many people here, and Yejoon is in someone else's arms, and everything is scary.

“Oh, he’s gorgeous.” Yet another new voice joins the crowd. Joonmyun twitches around to scrutinize the newcomer. It's Yixing's wife, Songmi. He glances around and soon finds Yixing a few paces away, in the act of leaving Minseok and following his wife over.

Yejin smiles at Songmi's praise. “He is, isn’t he?”

She takes Yejoon back from the scrub nurse and steps up to Songmi so she can get a closer look. Songmi looks Yejoon with stars in her eyes. She catches Yixing’s hand as he arrives and squeezes so hard Joonmyun sees the oncologist wince.

“We could have one of our own soon,” she says softly. Yixing nods as he hurriedly pulls his hand out of hers and massages his fingers.

“Are you pregnant?” Yejin asks Songmi. Songmi shakes her head and starts to tell Yejin about their plans of trying for kids, and they start to move away from the group of nurses to a place that is quieter. Joonmyun doesn’t want to be rude, but the further away his wife and child move, the more he starts to panic.

“I’m sorry, I should...” he starts, embarrassed to abandon Yixing who has only just said hello to him, but the oncologist just smiles and waves him off. Joonmyun starts to turn to follow his wife, but his attention is caught and held by a small group of people just arriving.

“Is that…?” He stares at the elegant older woman walking through the doorway, accompanied by two young women and a man all in their twenties, around the right age to be her children.

Yixing follows his gaze and tilts his head.

“Is that who?”

“I’m sure that’s Lee Taeyeon,” Joonmyun says. “She’s a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon, one of the first women in the field. I’ve heard she inspired many female surgeons.”

Yixing hums thoughtfully. “Why don't you go say hello?”

Joonmyun shakes his head immediately. "Oh, no. I wouldn't want to bother her."

Yixing's dimple appears as he smiles. "You’re a pretty famous surgeon yourself these days, you know, after that rebar removal. I’m sure she would be happy to meet you.”

Joonmyun starts to protest that he's not even slightly famous, but breaks off halfway through when panic flashes through him. He’s completely lost track of his wife and son. He abandons Yixing where he stands and rushes between groups of people until he spots his wife again, sitting on a chair in the far corner, Yejoon asleep in the baby car seat by her feet. Joonmyun gasps with relief and hurries over. He flops down on the chair beside her and closes his eyes. He's exhausted already, and it's barely been an hour.

"Please don't do this to me," he begs, only half-joking. "My heart can't cope."

Yejin shakes her head at him, but takes his hand anyway, rubbing her thumb gently over his knuckles.

❆❆❆

Chorong screams in joy as she’s chased around the Christmas tree in the middle of the room. Nayoung and Eunbi can’t stop laughing as they run after her. They can easily catch the six-year old if they try, but watching her eyes sparkle and hearing her laughter is something the two sisters agree is more fun than arguing over silly things. They have taught Chorong to play Uno, they've French-braided her hair and they’ve tasted all the different finger food laid out on the tables. Eunbi had dared Nayoung to take a sip of champagne and they’d giggled ecstatically when they hadn’t been caught.

When they run past Chorong's parents, her mom calls after them to walk instead of run, but none of the girls take notice or care. They fly past their dad, who starts to reach out a hand as if to call them back, but gives up when they're gone before he can say a thing. They catch Chorong near the entrance and start tickling her, eliciting shrill laughter, and a few of the people standing near the entrance move a couple of steps away.

❆❆❆

Someone pokes Jongin’s left shoulder. He looks over and finds Taehee there. She blinks innocently when their eyes meet. "What?"

He looks to his right and finds Taeah, blinking at him just as innocently as her sister.

“Oh, come on,” he groans, and both young women burst out in laughter.

“You’re just so easy to catch,” Taeah giggles.

"Every single time," adds Taehee gleefully.

Jongin pouts. Taeyeon has left the three of them to fend for themselves while she talks with the other big-shot surgeons present. Her daughters are like sisters to Jongin, and he's sure they're even better at teasing their adoptive little brother than blood-related siblings would be. When Taehee stops laughing, she wraps her arms around his midsection and hugs him.

“It’s just because you’re so cute when you’re annoyed,” she says.

"It's the pout. How can we possibly resist the pout?" Taeah agrees.

Jongin tries to stop pouting. It is not easy.

“I told you to behave if you wanted to come,” he mumbles, but neither of them listen to him. They take a hand each and pull him to stand near the drinks table, where they start discussing the latest milestones of Taehee’s twin baby daughters. Jongin spaces out of the conversation. A part of him wishes he'd brought Sohee, who wouldn't tease him mercilessly at every opportunity like his sisters do, but he's not ready for the step of all his friends and colleagues finding out he has a girlfriend. He hasn't even introduced her to Taeyeon yet. He loses track of his surroundings as he gets lost in his thoughts, and is caught off guard when someone grabs his shoulders from behind and tries to use him as a shield.

He blinks and focuses into the present. Kyungsoo is standing in front of him, holding a glass of red wine, looking uncomfortable. Jongin twists around to look over his shoulder and is baffled to find Taeah trying to hide behind him.

“Wait.” Beside him, Taehee is frowning as she looks at Kyungsoo. Jongin glances at her, bewildered, and Taehee snaps her fingers, a smile breaking over her face. “Wait. It's you, right? Do Kyungsoo?”

❆❆❆

Kyungsoo wishes the ground would open and swallow him up. He hadn't ever expected to see Taeah again, and now he's run into her only two weeks after their disastrous set-up - and at the hospital Christmas party of all places! What are the Lee sisters doing here? Why are they with Kim Jongin? He'd come over to talk to the young orthopaedic surgeon when he'd noticed Jongin looking distant and bored, but he hadn't recognized Taehee and Taeah until it was too late to back away. Damn his stupid astigmatism.

Jongin is giving Taeah a puzzled look over his shoulder. Kyungsoo politely pretends not to notice the younger Lee sister trying to hide from him. He forces a smile at Taehee.

“Yes, it’s me,” he admits. “Long time no see, Taehee.”

Jongin drags Taeah from behind him with a muttered “what are you doing?”. Taeah smoothes her dress and sends Kyungsoo an embarrassed smile.

“Hi, Kyungsoo,” she says.

Kyungsoo wants to curl up with embarrassment, feeling worse than ever about what had happened at the restaurant. Jongin looks from Taeah to Taehee to Kyungsoo, eyes growing wide.

“Wait, do you know each other?”

Kyungsoo hesitates, but neither of the sisters speak up to save him. He sighs.

"I went to the same church as Taehee and Taeah when we were kids,” he tells Jongin. "We attended Sunday school together."

He wants to know how Taehee and Taeah are connected to Jongin, as he knows for a certain fact neither of them is the orthopaedic surgeon’s partner, but his desire to escape far outweighs his curiosity. He catches sight of Chanyeol standing a couple of tables away and seizes the excuse thankfully. The paediatrician can be overwhelming at times, but he is certainly better than being stuck here with Taeah.

“I better go say hi to Dr. Park..." Kyungsoo starts, already backing away.

"No, don't go," Jongin protests. "You have to tell me about Sunday school! I need stories! I need ammunition to tease my sisters with!"

Sisters? For a moment, Kyungsoo doubts reality, wondering if Taehee and Taeah had a little brother he'd completely forgotten the existence of, but then he realises that the surname is wrong. Jongin can't be a blood relative. He's more curious than ever, but he can ask Jongin some other time when Taeah isn't present. He smiles apologetically and starts to take a step towards where he last saw Chanyeol, but finds that Chanyeol is now making his way towards them.

No, no, no, go back, go away, Kyungsoo thinks at him in panic, but he doesn’t manage to establish a telepathic connection with Chanyeol despite his best efforts. Chanyeol reaches them quickly on his long legs, all sparkling eyes and wide smiles as he greets Kyungsoo and Jongin and begs to be introduced to the girls. The conversation around Kyungsoo turns to white noise as Jongin introduces Taehee and Taeah to Chanyeol. Taeah is trying not to look bothered, but he can see she feels just as awkward as he does. In the end, sheer desperation has Kyungsoo faking a phone call. He can barely believe he's doing something so incredibly lame and immature as he backs away towards the doors out to the main hall with his phone on his ear, but anything is better than staying there in the awkwardness.

❆❆❆

Jongdae gently lifts Chorong onto his lap. She yawns and tries to keep her eyes open, but it’s way past her usual bedtime and she has spent a lot of energy this evening. Even half-asleep, she fights to be aware of Nayoung and Eunbi. The older two girls have used up most of their energy too and have flopped onto a couple of chairs at Jongdae's table. Ahreum talks to the little girls about school and their hobbies, while Chorong quickly falls into a doze in Jongdae's lap.

He sees Minseok approaching, probably coming to reclaim his daughters. Noticing the sleeping girl in Jongdae’s lap, he greets Jongdae and Ahreum quietly and sits down on the last empty chair at the table.

“Daddy,” Eunbi starts. Minseok shushes her.

“We have to be quiet so we don't wake Chorong."

Eunbi nods and sits up straighter in her chair, turning her body towards her father.

“Daddy, can we adopt her?” she asks in an audible whisper. Minseok splutters in surprise, while Jongdae does his best not to laugh out loud.

“No,” Minseok says when he's gotten over his surprise. Eunbi pouts.

"Why not?"

"Because Chorong already has a family who want to keep her," Minseok explains, catching Jongdae's eye and sending him an apologetic grimace. Jongdae shakes his head and smiles reassuringly. He knows how liable kids are to come out with crazy stuff, perhaps better than Minseok does, if he really sees his daughters as little as Kyungsoo had seemed to think.

“But I want a baby sister,” Eunbi whines.

“You’ll have to ask your mom for that one,” Minseok jokes. The astonishment is clear on his face when Eunbi brightens and agrees to ask. This time Jongdae can’t stop the chuckle that escapes him.

"Sorry. I hope they haven't been a bother," Minseok says as Eunbi and Nayoung start whispering to each other, possibly making plans for how to ask their mom for a baby sister.

"Not at all," Jongdae replies. "Just the opposite, actually. They've entertained Chorong for hours. She's had a wonderful time." He smiles at Minseok. "They're good girls," he says, a little quieter. "You should be very proud of them."

Minseok smiles.

❆❆❆

The main lights go dim, making the Christmas tree lights shine out brightly. A figure in a red velvet suit, white beard and golden half-moon spectacles slips into the conference room. He makes his way around the room, handing gift bags to the children who have attended with parents who work at the hospital. There’s a genuine smile behind the beard as the children gaze up at him with magic in their eyes. Minseok squints a little, sure the man behind the soft padded suit, beard and glasses is familiar, but he can't quite make it out in the dim lighting.

As he nears their table, Nayoung and Eunbi perk up. Chorong is fast asleep in Jongdae's lap.

“It’s Santa,” Eunbi whispers, eyes shining.

Nayoung catches Minseok's eye and gives him such a world-weary look that Minseok is hard-pushed not to burst into laughter.

Santa arrives at their table and gives Nayoung and Eunbi their gift bags. Inside is Christmas candy and a small bracelet for both girls, and they both thank "Santa" politely, then immediately put the bracelets on and compare colors. Minseok watches Santa hand a third bag to Ahreum and wink at Jongdae over Chorong's sleeping head. Jongdae looks startled, recognition bolting into his eyes as he attempts a half-bow while only able to move his head, but Santa just puts a white-gloved finger on his lips and smiles beneath his beard. When he moves on to the next table, Minseok scoots his chair closer to Jongdae’s.

“Who is it?” he whispers.

Jongdae's eyes are round as he whispers the answer into Minseok's ear. That was Dr. Oh Yohan, and Minseok knows that neither of them are ever going to forget the image of the imposing, dignified chief of staff dressed as Santa Claus.

❆❆❆❆❆❆

  
  


“Daeyong, come in here when you get a chance," Baekhyun hears Nurse Seo call out of the door of the treatment room. He recalls that Daeyong is the intern working in the emergency department tonight, but most of his attention is on the suture tray he’s preparing. His 24-year-old patient is lying on her back on the bed, her face mostly covered by green surgical drapes. Nurse Seo has left just her forehead and one eye exposed, so that she can keep track of what Baekhyun is doing to her. The drapes block a little of the sour reek of alcohol that washes over him with her every exhalation, but not all of it. Her third bottle of soju this evening had caused her to trip over her own feet and shatter a glass coffee table with her face. A triangular gash descends from the centre of her hairline towards the middle of each eyebrow, neatly splitting the skin of her forehead into three parts. When she’d come in and the triage nurse had removed the bloody towel her friend had been holding to her forehead, the whole segment of skin and flesh had flopped down over her nose, attached only between her eyebrows, exposing the white gleam of her skull. Not pretty.

The patient seems very cheerful for a girl with such a gruesome wound. She’s watching him through her single exposed eye. Baekyun sends her a reassuring smile, and her eye crinkles up as she smiles back.

“The nurse said you’re a plastic surgeon?” She slurs her words a little, but Baekhyun knows it's just the alcohol, not a sign of brain injury.

“That’s right.”

“Wow. I get a plastic surgeon. Awesome." She pauses. "Hey, can you give me double eyelids while I'm here?” The surgical drapes shift a little as she giggles.

Baekhyun holds back a sigh. He’s a plastic surgeon, not a cosmetic surgeon, but there’s little point in trying to explain the difference to an intoxicated 24-year-old, and besides, he really can’t be bothered. He has a potentially disfiguring laceration to close.

Baekhyun is covering the emergency department as the physician in charge tonight, while the chief of the department and the emergency physicians are at the staff Christmas party. In previous years Baekhyun wouldn’t have missed the party for the world, but this year, he just couldn't face it. All that talking. All that socialising. All that smiling. Once Baekhyun found it easy to smile, but not any more. The shock that nearly tore him apart the night Nari left has turned to a deep, unrelenting depression. The last time he genuinely smiled is so distant a memory he's forgotten what it felt like.

Baekhyun wonders if this is what they call heartbreak. The thing is, his heart doesn't just feel broken. It seems to have given up entirely.

Nari is another reason why Baekhyun can’t face the Christmas party. He hasn’t told anyone they’ve broken up. He can’t talk about it, can't really even think about it. If he does, he feels like he's going to throw up. If he goes to the party, Chanyeol or Jongdae or Jin or any one of his many friends and colleagues who know Nari would be bound to ask where she was. The whole thing is so difficult to deal with, and he doesn’t have the energy to even try.

But he can’t skip the party without a good excuse, which is why he’s in the emergency department now, preparing to sew a drunk girl’s forehead back together.

“Okay, I'm here. What's up?” The female voice at the door is the intern, Daeyong, who Nurse Seo called over before.

“Dr. Byun’s going to close this one,” Nurse Seo says in her usual stern tone. “Watch him. You won’t see a laceration closed better.”

Once, these words would have made Baekhyun smile, feel the glow inside that goes with having his skills recognised and appreciated - especially by a person such as Nurse Seo, who is well-known among those who consult in the ED for her no-nonsense ways and does not make such statements lightly. But now he hears the compliment without really taking it in. What does it matter, really, if people think he's a good doctor? What does any of it matter?

But he’ll do a good job on this girl regardless. This drunken accident could leave her with a disfiguring facial scar for the rest of her life. He knows she wouldn’t be quite so cheerful if she’d seen the extent of her injury. She’s lucky she’s getting treated by him. This kind of simple laceration would usually be closed by an ED resident, not a plastic surgeon, and would likely leave her with much worse scarring.

He registers Daeyong bringing a chair over to sit and watch as he starts the closure. Before long, she’s joined by a med student, then an interested nurse. Baekhyun focuses on his work, his slender fingers deftly drawing the edges of the cut together, the fine absorbable thread at just the right tension to help the cut heal without ridging or puckering. About four minutes into the procedure, the girl falls asleep. Her sour breath washes over him with each deep exhalation.

The intern and the med student are murmuring to each other as they watch him sew. They’ve never seen such tiny stitches, he hears them marvel, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

When the laceration is closed, he leaves the nurse to apply a dressing and goes back towards the reception. Being in charge of the ED means he needs to keep an eye on the chart rack. The triage nurse sorts the patient charts first by urgency and then by time, and the head nurse, Aecha, checks them, but as the most senior doctor present, he’s responsible for making sure nothing gets missed.

There are only five charts in the rack. It’s been an unusually quiet night so far, for which Baekhyun is grateful. He’s consulted in the ED for years for plastics, so he knows his way around, but it’s been a while since he’s focused on the much broader range of medical issues that emergency specialists see.

As Baekhyun glances at the charts, a neurosurgery resident, who, like Baekhyun, has opted to cover the ED rather than attend the party, comes out of one of the treatment rooms and approaches reception. This is the first time Baekhyun has met Dr. Huang Zitao. He’s not sure if he’s ever seen anyone look quite so exhausted, and for a doctor, that is saying something. The man's dark circles are practically down to his knees.

“Do you want to take a break?” he asks. “There’s nothing that looks urgent here. Take twenty minutes.”

Zitao looks a little surprised, but accepts the offer readily enough, disappearing towards the staff area. Aecha looks at him from behind the station.

“Don’t worry about Dr. Huang," she tells him kindly. "I know he looks like he’s about to drop, but he always looks like that. He’s actually a pretty energetic guy.” Her smile fades as she looks at him. “I’m more worried about you, to be honest. You look thinner every time I see you. Are you doing okay?”

Baekhyun is so, so sick of people asking him this.

“I’m fine. Busy. You know what it’s like.” He grabs the next patient chart and goes to call them before Aecha can ask anything more.

The chart is for a woman in her late sixties with a chief complaint of “tongue swelling”. Baekhyun goes into the quiet waiting room and calls her name. Two women stand up and wave him over. Baekhyun makes his way over, already eyeing his patient as he approaches. She doesn't appear to be in any distress. He introduces himself to all three of them. The two women in their thirties are her daughters. When Baekhyun looks more closely at their mother, it’s clear things are not normal. Her tongue is badly swollen, maybe an inch and a half thick, and protruding a bit out of her mouth. Baekhyun asks if she’s on blood pressure medications, and hears the word he both suspects and dreads.

Lisinopril. Damn.

He grabs a wheelchair and starts rolling the patient towards the trauma rooms. He doesn’t need to be an emergency specialist to know what’s going on. This is angioedema. This is serious.

He starts the history and exam. The swelling started after her evening dose of medicine which she took with dinner, about four hours ago, and it’s been getting slowly worse over the evening. The daughters are concerned, but it’s painless and their mom isn’t bothered much by it. Her voice is muffled when she speaks. Baekhyun knows this indicates possible swelling lower down in her airway too. Bad sign. Very bad sign. Why, he wonders unhappily, why couldn't it just have been a normal night of simple lacerations, sore throats and sprained ankles? Why did he have to get a life-threatening emergency the one night he's here alone? Is something punishing him for being too pathetic to show his face at the party?

He shakes his thoughts away and starts her on adrenalin, antihistamines and steroids. The treatments are for allergic swelling and rarely work for angioedema, but there are no other treatments for this. He asks Nurse Seo to bring a crash cart to the bedside, but he’s hoping that the swelling won’t progress any further. He hasn’t intubated a patient in years, it’s just not part of his job as a plastic surgeon, and though he remembers what to do, he’d really rather not.

He leaves for fifteen minutes to see another patient and give the allergy medications a chance to work, but when he gets back his heart drops. His patient is clearly worsening, and rapidly. Her tongue is now about two inches thick and protruding several inches from her mouth. She’s still in no real distress, but the time to act has come, and he’s afraid it won’t be easy.

The daughters’ faces go from anxious to downright panicky as he explains he’ll have to sedate their mother and place a tube down her windpipe so that she can breathe, as in minutes her airway will be swollen closed. There is no other reasonable option. The daughters agree to move forward. Their mother, however, is not convinced.

“My doctor says this medicine is good for me,” she tells him thickly through her swollen tongue. She sounds almost accusing, and he knows what she’s thinking. Her trusted family doctor, who has probably treated her family for years, has given her this medicine. She wants to believe in her GP, not in some random emergency room doctor younger than her own daughters. She doesn’t want a tube down her throat, and as she’s capable of giving consent, legally he can’t force her to accept treatment.

This is a nightmare. Baekhyun really does not want to have to explain to Minseok why he let a patient suffocate to death in front of him. He needs to get her to consent.

“I know your doctor is helping you, and he’s right, this medication is good for your condition, but sometimes unexpected side-effects happen,” he tries to explain. “If your airway swells any more you won’t be able to breathe. If we wait any longer I won’t be able to get the tube in. Please, you have to let me intubate you.”

No luck. This lady is stubborn. Baekhyun chews anxiously on his lip, feeling horribly out of his depth. He calls Nurse Seo over and asks her to bring the emergency cricothyrotomy set up. With this, he can do a “cric” - make a surgical incision in the neck just below the larynx and insert a tube through the hole, securing airflow to the lungs. Technically it’s not especially difficult, but it’s extremely intimidating. Baekhyun really does not want to perform this procedure, and certainly not in a patient already crashing with an airway obstruction. She has a short neck and is overweight, both of which will make the procedure harder. He palpates her larynx and the landmarks he needs to guide him can barely be felt. The nightmare just gets worse.

She continues to progress, and Baekhyun now has no choice but to act or watch her die of suffocation.

“Do you want to die?” he asks her desperately.

“No,” she says.

“Then listen to me. I have to intubate you, or your airway will close and you will suffocate to death.”

“No,” she says again. “No tube.”

Jesus fucking Christ, Baekhyun thinks. He’s failed. He can’t convince her. The daughters are sold, but their mom is competent to make her own decisions, and that legally binds him.

He tries to think his choices through. He could strictly follow her statement and watch her die, but how can he possibly do that? He could go against her wishes and save her life, but maybe face a horrible ethics review. Or even worse, he could go against her wishes, medically paralyze her in order to intubate her, and then fail to establish the airway. In that case, he will have murdered her.

Help, he thinks. But there’s nobody to help him. He’s the most senior doctor here. He has to handle this.

Movement at the door makes him glance over. Dr. Huang is there, one hand resting on the doorframe as he watches the proceedings. Baekhyun walks over to him quickly. A first-year neurosurgery resident is unlikely to have any more clue what to do about this than he does, but he’s better than nothing, even if just to bounce ideas off. “Did you hear?” he asks.

Zitao nods. “I heard. She said no tube.”

Baekhyun grimaces. “Yeah, and she’s going to suffocate to death if I don’t intubate her.”

The neurosurgeon's shadowed eyes are grave. “She said she didn’t want to die.”

Baekhyun looks at Zitao. His Korean is simplistic, yet somehow it makes the words click.

He sets his jaw. “You’re right. She doesn’t want to die. Fuck the ethics review. That’s good enough for me.”

He spins around and heads back to the bed. He asks for the respiratory techs and the anaesthesiologist to be paged STAT. Zitao follows him in and sets up the ventilator for him without being asked, while Baekhyun sprays a benzocaine spray onto the patient’s throat to numb it and prepares the equipment to intubate. The cric tray is moved aside, and Baekhyun prays to anyone and anything that might be listening that the intubation will go well and he won't have to use it. Nurse Seo readies a dose of sedative to be followed by stronger paralytic drugs once the tube is (hopefully) in and the airway is secured. Baekhyun is nearly vibrating with tension. This could all go so badly wrong, and he’s doing it against her will. He doesn’t tell her what he’s going to do. He doesn’t need her fighting him on top of everything.

The tubes are ready. The cric tray is ready in case he fails with the intubation. The drugs are ready. Then the intern arrives and reports that the anaesthesiologist is taking care of a critical case. Fuck. It’s just Baekhyun and Zitao - a plastic surgeon and a first-year neurosurgeon trying to cope with a swollen, partially-obstructed airway, one of the worst emergencies a specialist emergency physician can face.

The benzocaine spray has worked wonderfully, and when Baekhyun advances the laryngoscope down her throat he can see her vocal cords. Everything is very swollen and he has maybe half the view he should get, but he still has a chance. He can still get her intubated. That sure as hell beats trying to cut an airway into her neck. But because he doesn’t have her consent, he is on the thinnest of ice, and it is audibly cracking. His patient could plunge into icy waters in the next few moments, and take him down with her.

He looks at her daughters. They nod. Save our mom, doctor, their faces plead.

A little sedative is given. He adjusts the angle of her head and neck, straightening out the natural curve in the airway. He hasn’t forgotten the movements he practiced so often as a student and junior doctor. Then in he goes. It’s not as difficult as he feared. The breathing tube slips right down into the trachea. She struggles a bit and coughs, and Nurse Seo pushes the rest of the sedative in. Within thirty seconds, she is quietly sleeping, her airway secure.

Baekhyun is so relieved he feels light-headed. Thank fuck for that. She’s not going to die. What kind of horrendous peer review is he going to face? Fuck it. He saved her life. They can do what they want to him.

She is taken away to the ICU, and her daughters are so grateful that they both hug him. For the first time in weeks, Baekhyun actually feels something. The emergency and dealing with it has sent adrenaline through his system. He feels alive. Strung out and on edge and stressed to the max, yes - but alive. It’s such a relief that he almost feels like crying.

About two hours later, Baekhyun gets a call from an ICU nurse. The ICU attending wants him to come over. No doubt this is the dressing down Baekhyun expected. What were you thinking, he’ll be asked. That was dangerous. You are just a stupid plastic surgeon pretending to be an emergency doctor.

Oh well. Like he said before, fuck it.

He walks over to the ICU, trying not to feel apprehensive. He knows what he did was right, even if idiotic laws say otherwise.

When he gets there, the ICU attending gives him a friendly smile. A good sign. He reads the name on the ID clipped to her chest pocket. Dr Lee Eunsook. She says, “Go take a look at your patient now.”

Baekhyun goes into her room and is dumbfounded. Her whole face has swollen up like a balloon. Her lips are three inches thick. Her tongue makes her look like some hideous cartoon character - it is hanging down below her chin. The airway tube he put in seems to be coming out of the center of a melon. Without it, she would be dead.

He shuffles back out of the room and looks wordlessly at Dr. Lee. She gives him a double thumbs-up and a wide smile. "Good call, Dr. Byun," she says.

Baekhyun goes back to the ED and finishes his shift. At 7 am the next morning, he says goodbye to Aecha. She gets up from behind the nursing station and comes around it to face him. He looks at her, surprised and a little uncertain. Her smile-lined face is serious, and there's some deep expression in her eyes he can't quite place.

"Dr. Byun...." she hesitates. "Baekhyun. You're a good doctor, a good person, and you're valued. I hope you know that."

Baekhyun can't meet her eyes any longer. His throat, his eyes, have suddenly gone tight. The words echo inside his emptiness, clanging hollow.

Once, he would have agreed with her.

He's not quite sure he can any more.

"Thank you," he says, hanging his head.

Aecha smiles at him. “Go get some sleep, Dr. Byun. I'm glad you were here today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holiday season, dear readers! We hope you have as wonderful a time as possible! Thank you for reading the story so far and we hope you continue to enjoy it! ~Michan & Minji


	13. January 2nd

Her name is Kang Minseo, and she is nearly eight years old. She's sitting on a chair in front of Baekhyun in his office, small legs clad in hospital pyjamas swinging, and her mother is sitting next to her. Minseo has the kind of strong, angular facial bone structure that looks odd on a child, but portents her eventual development into a beautiful woman; the transformation from an ugly duckling into a swan.

Bone structure aside, right now Minseo is anything but beautiful. Her scalp from her right ear up to the crown of her head is mottled with the shiny, melted plastic-looking scarring of a healed burn. The skin is so damaged that hair cannot grow on the right side of her head at all. For the last three years, Minseo has worn a headscarf or beanie to cover the damage, but she can't wear those any more. They won't fit over the huge, balloon-like deformity that swells up from the left side of her scalp, the side that isn’t scarred. It makes her look like she has a second head bulging out the side of her real one.

Baekhyun regards the deformity with satisfaction. It’s exactly how he wanted it.

Minseo has been Baekhyun’s patient since she was five years old. He’d treated the initial burns she’d suffered when she’d been hit by a misfired backyard firework and put in place a long-term plan to give her a skin graft on the damaged part of her scalp when she was strong enough to take the procedure. Now, finally, the time has come. Eight weeks ago, he performed a small surgery on the good side of her scalp to fit her with a tissue expander - a silicone balloon inserted under the skin that he’s been injecting saline solution into every two weeks. Now he can use the new skin that has grown over the tissue expander for a skin graft. The deformity the tissue expander causes is grotesque, but temporary. When she’s healed from today’s surgery, Minseo will be able to grow hair on both sides of her head.

“Do you understand what’s going to happen today?” he asks Minseo. She nods, her bright eyes eager. She’s an extremely smart kid. Baekhyun’s been consistently surprised over the years by the detail in which he can explain things to her.

“You’re going to do a GATE flap reconstruction, that stands for Gulraiz Advanced Transportation Expanded flap,” she recites. “You’re going to take out the tissue expander and use the extra skin I grew over it to replace my scar tissue.”

Baekhyun smiles at her. “That’s right. Do you have any more questions?” He glances at her mother as well as he asks this, but neither of them do. It’s all been explained to them before, and they’ve had plenty of time to research and ask him questions at previous appointments.

“I’m not scared,” Minseo tells him. “Mom is more scared than I am, right mom?” She grins up at her mother, who gives a soft laugh of acknowledgement.

“She’s excited,” she tells Baekhyun. “She’s been looking forward to it ever since you put the expander in. I never knew a child to be excited about surgery.”

“Because Dr. Byun is going to make it so I’m not ugly anymore,” Minseo says. “I won’t get called egg-head or alien. I’ll have real hair like everyone else.” She beams at Baekhyun. “I’m going to be normal.”

Baekhyun’s heart goes out to her. She’s been through so much, this brave little girl. He sends her through to get prepped for surgery by the nurses. The next time he sees her will be in the OR.

He turns back to his computer and updates her journal. When that task is done, he leans his elbows on the desk, closes his eyes and rests his forehead on his clasped hands. A deep sigh escapes him, but he barely notices it. Now that Minseo and her mom are gone, the bleakness within him makes itself known again. His interactions with patients and colleagues feel like he’s covering a massive sinkhole with a thin layer of asphalt. It looks like a normal road, but as soon as a car drives over it, it will fall through the surface and plunge into the abyss.

Weariness presses over him like a lead weight, but he can’t escape into sleep. He has Minseo’s reconstruction to do, and he needs to be alert for that. She deserves his best work. This is her life he’s setting her up for, and her future matters. He takes in a deep breath and forces it out slowly, trying to push away the aching hollow within his chest. He opens his eyes and looks at the clock. It’s nearly time to scrub in.

He stands up. A wave of dizziness rushes over him and he braces himself on his desk and hangs his head, breathing deeply until it passes. It tells him that he needs to eat something, and fairly soon. He walks out of his office and towards the shared plastics workroom. Lately the residents have taken to leaving snacks out on the table and announcing that the food is free for anyone whenever Baekhyun walks in. It’s not exactly what Baekhyun would call subtle. He's aware they’re worried about him, but he wishes they wouldn’t. He’s not stupid. He knows he needs to eat so his body can function, but he’s never hungry anymore, and forcing food down his throat involves too much effort. He can tell he's losing too much weight, but he really doesn’t have the energy to care.

But he can’t be getting dizzy spells during Minseo’s surgery, so he grabs a muesli bar from the table and forces himself to eat half of it before the thick mush it turns into in his mouth becomes nauseating and impossible to swallow. He drops the other half in the bin and goes to scrub in.

Scrubbing in is never exactly fun, but lately it has become sheer torture for Baekhyun. He kicks the foot valve below the trough sink, wets his hands and arms up to the elbow and lathers them with scrubbing solution. The chemical solution sears into the eczema that covers his inner arms from elbow to wrist, and he hisses between his teeth as his firm circular motions with the scrubbing pad force it deeper into the damaged skin. It’s about the worst thing he could do for eczema, but he has no choice. Everything has to be sterile for surgery, skin conditions or no skin conditions. He watches the wall clock as he scrubs methodically, forcing himself to endure it for the full two minutes. When they’re finally up, he kicks the foot valve again and washes the scrubbing solution off, then pats his arms dry with a sterile towel. A glance at his arms shows them to be cracked and blotched, flaming an angry red.

He walks over to Iseul, the scrub nurse today, who is holding a surgical gown ready for him. She grimaces sympathetically when she sees the state of his arms.

“It’s getting worse,” she tells him as she tugs the gown over his shoulders and goes around his back to tie it. “Do you think you should see a dermatologist?”

Baekhyun thinks of Sehun and what he’d say if he saw how bad his arms have gotten since the last time he checked them. Sehun knows it’s stress-related.

He shakes his head. “No point. Even if I use a topical, scrubbing in will counteract it.”

Iseul is back around his front again, holding out the green indicator gloves. He pushes his hands into them, then into the white gloves that go over the top.

“And you don’t know what causes it?”

He shrugs. “It comes and goes. Always has done. It’ll go away again eventually.”

Jin walks in then, and Iseul leaves him to prepare a gown and gloves for the 2nd year resident. Baekhyun walks down the hall towards the operating room, double-gloved hands held in front of him at chest height, palms inward. He enters the OR and nods at the staff already present; a circulating nurse, the anaesthesiologist, and the theatre nurses who have prepared Minseo for surgery. They’ve covered her in green surgical drapes, shaved her head and sterilized her scalp. Jin walks in after him. When everyone is ready, Baekhyun steps up to the table and begins the procedure.

He goes through the steps mechanically, without much thought. He doesn’t have to say much in surgery, only the names of whichever retractor or scalpel he needs, and apart from those words he works in silence. He neatly cuts away the damaged tissue, then makes the sequence of incisions that will enable him to rotate the new skin around and place it into the gap. Weariness drags at him as he works. This kind of work is Baekhyun’s specialty, he excels at things that involve pinpoint precision, but today, everything feels hard. Not technically hard, just...hard. It’s hard to make his hands move, hard to focus on what he’s doing. Several times he finds himself slowing to a complete stop, just staring blankly down at the exposed scalp in front of him. It takes an incredible effort just to get himself to perform the next action.

“Stop!”

The word is barked out sharply, jolting Baekhyun from somewhere dark and distant. He freezes and looks at Jin. The older resident is staring at him from across the surgical table, eyes shocked above his surgical mask.

“What's wrong?” Baekhyun glances down at Minseo in sudden concern. He wasn’t paying as much attention as he could have been, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing, and the anaesthesiologist hasn’t said anything about dropping O2 sats or other warning signs. All the same, he realises that Jin isn’t the only one looking at him. The theatre nurse at his side is staring up at him too.

“You just rubbed your eyes,” Jin says.

Baekhyun stares at him. “What?”

“He’s right,” the theatre nurse backs him up. “I saw you too.”

Baekhyun is silent. His knee-jerk reaction is to disbelieve them. He does not remember rubbing his eyes. Surely he wouldn’t do that. Not in surgery.

But they wouldn't lie to him.

He takes a step back from the table. If he touched his eyes, or any other part of his face or head, even his mask or cap, then he’s broken the sterile field. He can’t work on Minseo now. He turns and leaves the OR without a word. They’ll know where he’s going. They’ll have to wait while he scrubs out and then goes through the entire process of scrubbing in again.

Baekhyun feels strange as he scrubs out. Iseul is silent as she prepares another gown and glove set for him. She’s probably not sure what to say. Touching the face while working in a sterile field is a mistake so basic that it’s rare for even medical students on their first time in an OR to make it. If anyone working under Baekhyun had done such a thing, he’d have yelled at them and, unless he’d really needed their presence, he’d have thrown them out of his OR and not let them back in. If Jin hadn’t stopped him, he’d have potentially introduced bacteria to Minseo’s wound and put her at risk of infection. But the thing that’s really alarming Baekhyun is that he has no recollection of touching his face. He was so out of it that he didn’t even realise what he was doing.

For the first time, Baekhyun wonders if there might actually be something wrong with him. Something more wrong than the depression anyone would feel over a bad breakup. As the scrubbing solution sears into his eczema for the second time, he pieces things together in his head. He thinks about his constant weariness, his inability to eat normally, how much he wants to sleep and do nothing else at all. He thinks about how much he hates it when his friends try to talk to him and wishes they’d all just leave him alone, how his stress eczema has flared up so badly he can’t even scrub in without hissing in pain. He thinks about how his entire personality seems to have done a 180 degree spin, and how it’s impossible for people not to notice. He thinks about how hard it is to make himself perform a simple procedure he could do in his sleep, and how he was so out of it he rubbed his eyes during surgery without even being aware of it.

It's not right. Even Baekhyun can see that it's not right.

He lets Iseul gown him again and goes back into the OR. Everyone is silent as he steps back up to Minseo and resumes the procedure. There’s really nothing to say. It’s not like he’s a junior doctor who can be reprimanded for such a mistake. He’s the one meant to be doing the reprimanding. He should be mortified, but all he feels is  _ numb _ .

He finishes the procedure. It’s all gone perfectly, apart from his lapse halfway through. Kang Minseo will have a full head of hair for her eighth birthday. “Good work,” he tells his team, but the words have no real feeling in them.

He scrubs out. Jin is beside him.

“Baekhyun..." the older resident starts. Baekhyun flinches. He turns slightly away from Jin, flinging up mental walls. He can't let Jin ask. He can’t explain. He can’t handle the other man’s concern. It’s all just too much.

He cuts in before Jin can continue. “I’m going to talk to her mom, then take a break,” he says abruptly. Jin can’t talk to him if Baekhyun refuses to let him. He drops his scrubs in the trash and walks out without another thought. As he goes down the corridor, he trails his fingertips lightly along the wall without really processing the fact that he's doing it. The tactile sensation is weirdly comforting. It’s been a long time since anyone touched him.

He reassures Minseo’s mom that the procedure went perfectly. He smiles at her. He knows how to smile. Stretch his lips like this. Crinkle his eyes like this. It feels appalling, but it seems to be convincing enough, at least to her.

He’s still in his surgical scrubs when he finds himself on the ground floor without much conscious recollection of getting himself there. The main entrance is ahead of him. It’s snowing outside.

Baekhyun walks out of the doors and into the snow. It’s dirty and ice-hard where it has been settled on the street for days, but the flakes falling from the sky are fresh and clean. They land on the fine hairs rising up on his bare forearms, soft as feathers. He starts to walk. Odd, perhaps, to go for a walk in the snow dressed only in short-sleeved surgical scrubs, but Baekhyun can’t find it in himself to care. He doesn’t care what people think. He doesn't care that it’s cold. He feels it, distantly, but he can’t make it matter. Snowflakes fall into his hair and lodge there, tiny stars of white adorning the black strands.

There’s a route he's often walked around the hospital, on his breaks when he needs a breath of fresh air. It goes down the side of the hospital block, then along a narrow street with a sports ground on one side and a concrete wall on the other. On the other side of the wall, a busy freeway cuts into the hill below. Baekhyun walks beside the wall until he reaches the footbridge that arches over the freeway. He walks slowly up the zig-zag ramp. Then he starts across the bridge. His route will take him along the edge of the park on the other side of the freeway, then to an underpass that will get him back to the hospital. At least, that’s his intention, but as he walks across the footbridge the lead-lined hollow inside him seems to swell unbearably, and a huge weight of sadness presses down on him. It feels like a giant hand is trying to crush him to the ground. He’s not aware his slowing steps are taking him off-course until he bumps into the railing. He stops walking and leans his forearms on the freezing metal rail, shoulders bowed beneath the weight. Far below him, six lanes of traffic rush, three in each direction. He stares down at them rushing, rushing, endlessly rushing. Snow starts to slowly build up on his shoulders and the back of his lowered head.

Baekhyun knows where he is. He's on a bridge over a freeway. A bridge with a railing easily climbed over. The height is potentially survivable, but falling into freeway traffic is not. He's not really fully processing the thoughts that drift through him, but somewhere in his hollowness, he becomes aware that the idea of dying right now doesn't seem scary at all. In fact, it would be easy. He’s not thinking of actually doing it. He doesn't have an actual desire to die. But at the same time, Baekhyun finds, he doesn't have a desire to live, either. There's not much difference between dying and living, really, when everything is meaningless.

“Baekhyun!”

The shout of his name penetrates his emptiness. He drags his head up. At some point it's started to snow a lot harder without him noticing. The driving white flakes partially obscure the tall figure coming towards him across the bridge, but he recognizes the deep voice. He watches Chanyeol run up to him, feet slipping slightly in the fresh snow.

“What are you doing?” Chanyeol cries. He grabs Baekhyun’s upper arm to haul him away from the railing, and his hand goes right around it so that his fingers and thumb meet. Both of them stare at it. Even Baekhyun knows that adult arms aren’t supposed to be that thin.

“Oh, Baekhyun.. _. _ ” Chanyeol’s voice is a pained whisper. He shakes his head and starts to drag Baekhyun back along the bridge. “Why are you out here in nothing but scrubs? Are you crazy? You’ll freeze to death!”

Baekhyun lets himself be pulled along. He hasn’t the energy to protest. When they get off the bridge, Chanyeol takes his long padded jacket off. He puts it around Baekhyun's shoulders, pushes his unresponsive arms into the sleeves, then pulls the fur-lined hood up over his head and does up the zip. The coat is warm inside from Chanyeol’s body heat, and it finally hits Baekhyun just how cold he is. His skin feels like ice against the warm fabric of the coat. He can’t feel his hands or feet. He becomes aware that he is shivering violently, and realises that he's been feeling his body shake for quite some time now. Chanyeol puts his arm around his shoulders and hurries him back up the street towards the hospital. They’re covering the ground so fast Baekhyun is half-stumbling.

“H-how did you k-know where I was?” His voice is jerky. He’s shivering so hard it’s like having spasms.

“Your resident, Park Jin, saw you leave and called me. He says you won’t talk to him. But you’re going to talk to me.” Chanyeol sounds very firm. Baekhyun shuts up and lets Chanyeol hustle him into the hospital. The warm air inside hits him like walking into a wall. He keeps the hood of Chanyeol’s coat up. It nearly comes down to his chin, and the cuffs reach far beyond his fingertips. From the limited field of vision the hood leaves him with, he finds himself being walked down a corridor that has a mural of animals and rainbows painted on the walls. He hears nurses call cheerful greetings to “Dr. Park”, and sees their scrubs beneath the furred edge of the hood; they're paediatric nurses, their colourful scrubs printed with cartoon characters or other bright designs. Chanyeol stops for a second to talk to a nurse and ask her to bring him a couple of blankets. Then they’re in the paediatric ward staff room, and Chanyeol walks him over to a couch and sits him down on it.

Baekhyun huddles into the corner of the couch inside Chanyeol’s coat. It’s so big on him it feels like being wrapped in a duvet, and it’s oddly comforting. His jerking shivers start to lessen.

He listens to the sounds of Chanyeol boiling a kettle, putting cups on the bench, pouring water. He hears the door open and Chanyeol’s low voice thanking whoever is there. Then he feels the couch dip as Chanyeol sits beside him. He puts the blankets over his legs, then pushes a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. Baekhyun wriggles his hands out of the cuffs of Chanyeol’s coat and wraps his icy fingers around it.

“Now,” Chanyeol says. “Talk to me.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes. He understands that his friend is worried. Baekhyun is failing to keep his struggle hidden, and he knows it. But he also knows that if he admits to how he’s feeling he’ll only worry him even more, and he doesn’t want that. He just wants to be left alone.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol prompts when there’s only silence. “Talk, or I’m seriously going to call my friend over in psychiatrics and request an assessment. I am not kidding.”

This makes Baekhyun’s eyes open. A psych assessment? Does he really look that bad?

“No, don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t overreact. I know I shouldn’t have gone out without a jacket, but it was so warm inside I didn’t think of it.”

“But when you found it was snowing outside, you didn’t think of going back in?”

Baekhyun shrugs.

“What were you doing on the footbridge?”

Baekhyun hesitates. “Thinking?”

“About?”

“Nothing. Stuff.” He pushes the hood down so that Chanyeol can see his face. Taking to a hood won’t be helping. “I know it was a dumb thing to do. I was just distracted. I’ve been a little stressed lately, but I’ll get through it.”

“But Baekhyun…” Chanyeol looks so bewildered, and it’s making Baekhyun’s heart hurt. “I don’t get it. It’s not just stress. I’ve never seen you like this, not even during finals, or when we had those 36-hour shifts as interns. It’s not just me - Jongdae is worried too. Your residents are worried. Everyone is worried.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Baekhyun says quietly, “but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a private issue and I’ll handle it.” He lowers his gaze from Chanyeol’s face. It’s too hard to see the sadness there.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Chanyeol asks. “I won’t judge, no matter what it is. I hate seeing you like this, Baekhyun. We’ve been friends for so long. Can’t you trust me?”

Baekhyun hangs his head. He’s not the person Chanyeol made friends with, not anymore. That laughing, happy Baekhyun is so distant he barely remembers what it was like to be him. He wonders why Chanyeol is even bothering. He’s no fun to be around, that’s for sure.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he says. “I just need to deal with this on my own.”

Chanyeol’s sigh sounds like defeat, and Baekhyun knows he’s won. Chanyeol can’t force answers out of him. But this victory doesn’t feel like winning at all. All he’s accomplished here is hurting his friend.

“Will you at least talk to Nari when you get home?”

Nari. Pain. Baekhyun feels sick.

“She’s…away. For…for work.” The lie tastes like ashes on his tongue.

“So you’re alone at home?”

He nods, and there’s a silence. Eventually Baekhyun breaks it by saying, “You better get back to your patients.”

“Are you done for today?” Chanyeol asks him. He nods. “Then...will you wait for me? I’ve got another hour, but…” he hesitates for a long moment, so long Baekhyun looks up at him, wondering what’s going on.

“Will you come over to my place when I’m done? You don’t have to talk or do anything. We can just watch a movie. Just...be together.” He sounds nervous, and Baekhyun notices his hands are twisting together. It makes him feel strange. How has he made Chanyeol this nervous about just asking to spend time together?

“I’m really tired,” he says, but Chanyeol seems to have gathered some resolve from somewhere.

“You can rest here until I’m done. I’ll make sure the nurses don’t bother you. Please, Baekhyun. I...I don’t want you to be alone tonight.”

Baekhyun finally understands. Chanyeol found him staring over the railing of a bridge, wearing nothing but scrubs in sub-zero temperatures. He understands what Chanyeol is worried about, and he can’t say no. Nobody deserves that kind of worry, least of all Chanyeol.

“I’m not exactly good company right now,” he says, and Chanyeol’s face lights up.

“It doesn’t matter. So long as you’re with me, I don’t care.”

“Okay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’ll…” Chanyeol is suddenly nervous again. “I’ll let my...my flatmate know. Don’t worry, he’s super nice.”

Baekhyun nods vaguely. He didn’t know Chanyeol had a flatmate, but exhaustion is dragging at him, and he’s too tired to bother asking when or how this new flatmate came about. He puts his untouched coffee down on the coffee table, pulls his hood up again and huddles deeper into the warm darkness of Chanyeol’s coat. He closes his eyes, and he’s asleep before his friend has even left the room.

\---

It’s a traffic accident. People are moving in and out of the large trauma bay and Jongin feels a little lost. It’s not often he’s called to big traffic accidents like this. There are a total of four patients. One died on impact, another sustained life threatening injuries to their abdomen and will likely die on the table. One fractured their back multiple places and is likely to become paralyzed from the waist down. The last patient is the one Jongin has been called to. She’s hyperventilating as nurses cut her pants off and throw them to the floor, and emergency residents are trying to bring her blood pressure up by inserting IV lines to give fluids and blood. The ghastly leg injury gets more visible as her clothes are discarded, and bright blood starts to spurt from the wound when the temporary pressure dressing the paramedics applied is removed. Jongin leaps forward, uncaring as blood splatters onto his pants. There’s a severed artery in there. The fracture is so open it’s a matter of seconds for him to locate the anterior tibial artery in the wound and clamp it shut with the equipment the nurse hands him. With the worst of the bleeding stopped, he’s now able to assess the wound more carefully.

The leg is a mess, embedded with glass, gravel, and what looks like chunks of plastic - probably from the interior of the car, Jongin realises. The tibia protrudes from the skin, broken into two visible pieces and likely shattered a lot more than what initially meets the eye. This is not the first open fracture he has seen, but it’s one of the worst, and he knows there isn’t much time, because with one of the main leg arteries severed, there’s not enough blood flow to her foot to keep the tissue alive.

A small hand lands on his shoulder and Jongin turns towards the doctor next to him.

“What do you think?” Minseok asks him. 

“She needs urgent surgery,” Jongin says. Minseok nods and starts calling orders around the trauma bay. Jongin turns to the charge nurse and asks her to get an OR ready. As she picks up the phone, she tells him that when he gets a chance the parents want to talk to him.

Jongin finds out her name before turning and leaving the chaos behind. In the waiting area, a middle aged man paces as what appears to be his wife sits on a chair, hands clasped, and prays aloud.

“Cha Eunhee’s parents?” Jongin asks. They both stop what they’re doing and turn to stare at him. Jongin is aware that Mrs. Cha is staring at the bloodstains on his pants. He introduces himself, but before he can get further he’s interrupted by Mrs. Cha.

“Where is our daughter?” The woman almost topples off her chair to crawl towards him. Jongin spares her the embarrassment and walks towards them both. “Is she okay? Please say she’s okay; she has to be okay.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks.

“Although she lost a lot of blood, her vital signs have improved and we’ve managed to stabilize her. However, her leg is very badly damaged,” he says. The woman gasps loudly and starts praying again as new tears form in her eyes.

“Will you be able to save her leg?” Mr. Cha asks.

At the moment Jongin is more worried about saving Eunhee’s life. The girl was in shock and almost bled to death from that severed artery in her leg. He longs to reassure her parents, but he has learned not to make promises. “Mr. Cha,” he says, “I’m going to do everything I can.”

“Please, God, please make Dr. Kim save Eunhee’s leg,” he hears Mrs. Cha’s prayer in the background and is taken aback by being mentioned by name in it. She keeps repeating the same words, hands clasped as she gazes upwards, and the man glares at Jongin like he will find him and hurt him if he doesn’t save the leg.

He leaves them and runs up to the OR. They’ve taken her to OR 12, the largest of the operating rooms. In contrast to the ED where everyone had been barking orders, shouting for equipment, and rushing back and forth, the OR is quiet, almost hushed. Voices are muffled. There’s a greater sense of control here. They’re surgeons, and this is their turf. Yet Jongin can’t shake his sense of unease. Mrs. Cha praying so desperately for him to succeed has rattled him somehow.

The large sliding doors open and Jongin walks into the OR with his gloved hands in front of him. Against the far wall the laminar-flow machine hums faintly. The cardiac monitor issues its staccato, reassuring beeps. The anaesthesiologist, Dr. Kang, has just finished the intubation. The scrub nurse stands at the back table carefully arranging her instruments. Two circulating nurses shuttle back and forth with instrument trays from the sterilizer. In the corner, a radiology tech waits patiently next to her portable X-ray machine.

Jongin joins the four residents from various surgical specialties who are clustered around the shattered leg. With Eunhee’s body covered by surgical drapes and her leg cleaned and debrided of glass, gravel and chunks of plastic car interior, the extent of the injury is more apparent. Large sections of muscle, skin and bone are missing. Parts of nerves and arteries have been torn away.

First one, then another of the residents pokes at the wound, winces and shakes his or her head, then steps back. No one is sure what to do. Try to save the leg, or amputate it? They all look at Jongin. He’s the most senior orthopaedic surgeon here. He was a resident like them only last year, but now he’s a fellow. He’s the one who has to decide. Jongin knows he’s a good surgeon, but right now he feels like a lost child.

The 4th year resident, Park Hyunshik, sends him a questioning look, but Jongin isn’t ready. He needs to think about this. He stands in the middle of the OR with the bright lights trained on the bloody mess that is Eunhee’s leg. He tries to put everything else out of his mind. His natural impulse, of course, is to try and save it. If there’s a chance in a million, take it. The kid is only seventeen years old. What does he have to lose by trying? If it doesn’t work they can always amputate the leg later. Doesn’t he owe it to Eunhee to at least try?

Jongin isn’t sure. Eunhee’s leg is so badly damaged that an attempt to save it could cost her life.

But what about Eunhee? What would she want? What if Jongin woke her up and said, “Eunhee, your leg is severely injured. Should we cut it off or try to save it?” Does anyone think she would say, “Cut if off?” She’s only seventeen years old.

The room is quiet save for the sign of the ventilator and the steady beep of the cardiac monitor. From behind the drape at the head of the table, the anaesthesiologist looks at him questioningly. The residents stand silent, some looking at the ground, some staring at the gaping wound in front of them. No one moves. No one speaks. They all wait. For Jongin.

On the surgical field in front of him is a leg, isolated from the person it belongs to by the surgical draping. It’s just a mangled hunk of skin and bone, but Jongin is thinking of the unseen connections that tie it to a girl’s life. What about Eunhee’s sports games and school dances? What about her walks in the forest and around foreign cities when she goes travelling? This isn’t some abstract problem of whether a leg clinically should or should not be amputated. This is a kid’s future.

“Patient’s name: Cha Eunhee,” Jongin states, and Dr. Kang confirms. “Procedure: External fixation on tibia fracture in the right leg.” Once again Dr. Kang confirms the right procedure and Jongin nods to the scrub nurse and Hyunshik as he walks closer to stand directly in front of the patient.

The scalpel feels heavy in his hand as he lets the blade run down her shin, cutting down and elongating the wound from which her bones stick out. He needs more space to properly align them back in place. With the skin away, Jongin finds that the muscles are tense and bone fragments have severed the anterior tibial vein as well as the artery he clamped in the ED, leading to blood collecting in the tissue. Below the visible open fracture, the fibula has splintered into multiple tiny fragments that have driven their way into tissue, cutting through muscles, tendons and blood vessels. There’s less solid bone remaining than there are splinters. It’s a total disaster.

“Crap,” he whispers. Hyunshik leans a little over the table to see better.

“What is it?” Dr. Kang asks. Jongin doesn’t look away from the leg as he answers.

“Acute compartment syndrome and a severed anterior tibial vein,” he says. “We have to do a fasciotomy before we do anything else.” He doesn’t want to touch the fracture before the swelling and compression in her muscle die down enough to let blood flow back into her leg. If he doesn’t allow blood flow before he starts on the fracture, the bone will never heal and amputation will be absolutely inevitable. Dr. Kang nods and checks Eunhee’s blood pressure to confirm she’s still well under anaesthesia. Jongin cuts into the muscle compartment around the severed vein and releases some of the pressure within.

“I need a suture kit,” he says to the scrub nurse while he cuts another wound into the muscle. The monitor beeps steadily. Jongin needs to sew the vein together to prevent more blood spreading into the muscle and the surrounding tissue, and then the artery to get blood circulating in her foot again. The needle and the thread go through the tissue quickly as Jongin works his hands as fast as he can. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.

“Forceps,” he says. The scrub nurse hands him a pair. Bone fragments, one after another, are slowly and carefully removed from the fracture site. Jongin doesn’t count them as he removes them, just hears the melodic  _ plink _ every time another one hits the steel tray. Hyunshik tracks the acute compartment syndrome and the swelling to make sure blood flow establishes back into Eunhee’s foot. Jongin is almost done removing the last pieces of splinters when Hyunshik pipes up with a very quiet “Dr. Kim?”.

“Yes?” He sounds sharper than he means to, but there is an insane amount of pressure on him right now.

“The swelling of her muscles has gone down a little, but the pulse hasn’t returned. It seems like we might have actual tissue damage because of the fracture.”

It’s a good assessment, and a correct one. Jongin feels dismay well up in him. Eunhee’s mother and her prayers ring in his head as he abandons the fracture to look at her foot and sees the evidence of what the resident has just told him.  _ Please, God, make Dr. Kim save Eunhee’s leg _ .

But what if he can’t?

“How are her vitals?” he asks Dr. Kang. The anaesthesiologist looks at his monitors before he tells Jongin that Eunhee is stable. Jongin wishes he could leave the OR for a minute or two to gather his thoughts, but that’s not possible. He has to make a decision now as he’s standing here.

When he started his orthopaedic surgery residency, he always had Dr. Lee Taeyeon by his side as his attending and mentor, and as he got older and more experienced she stood back to watch him grow in skill and confidence. Now he’s doing his fellowship and all the residents look up to him. He still has an attending above him, but Dr. Cho is trying to save some function in the patient whose spine got fractured and he can’t make a decision for Jongin.

Clinically speaking, everything is pointing at amputation. The large amount of tissue that has already been damaged won’t ever get function back, and it has a high chance of going necrotic and leading to sepsis and death. With restricted blood flow, even the external fixation will not help the fracture grow back together, and that in itself is a complication that can lead to even more tissue damage.

But Jongin promised her parents that he would do his best.  _ Make Dr. Kim save her leg _ , the voice in his head chants.

He knows there’s an easy way out of this dilemma. He can play the hero, patch her leg together and pretend it’s fixed. Six months from now when Eunhee and her family realise they should have had an amputation in the first place, they’ll still remember him as the hero, because he did what they wanted, and okay, it ended up getting amputated anyway after six months of terrible suffering, but what can be better than trying to save the leg? But he knows that’s not really doing his best. They might think it is right now, but Jongin knows better.

“Dr. Kim, her blood pressure is dropping slightly. What are your plans?” Dr. Kang’s voice forces Jongin out of his thoughts. What are his plans? The longer she stays anaesthetized, the bigger risks of complications from anaesthesia as well. He can’t continue with the fracture when the outcome is so uncertain. He looks at the mutilated pile of skin and bone that up until an hour ago had been a miracle of strong, functioning flesh. Now it is only a mass of dark meat lying on a green surgical sheet slowly oozing its life away.

“I’m going to amputate.”

It’s like he has doused the entire OR in ice cold water. Hyunshik looks at him with wide eyes. He’s thinking Jongin will want him to amputate the leg, but Jongin is going to do it himself. He trusts Hyunshik to be able to do it, but this is his patient, his decision, and it is him who will take the fallout. He isn’t going to walk away and make Hyunshik deal with all that.

He puts a gloved finger just below her knee and finds the pulse on both sides of the leg. The skin and muscle above the fracture looks healthy enough. Knowing there’s a healthy pulse to the undamaged area only cements his decision further.

Jongin cuts open the skin around the fracture and then cuts through the muscle layer by layer. He takes the bone saw the nurse holds out to him and the noise vibrates through the quiet OR. He files the bone stump smooth and pulls the muscles down around it while he connects blood vessels and cauterizes the smaller ones so it won’t bleed. When he’s done with the muscles, Jongin pulls at the skin. He looks up to meet Hyunshik’s gaze and feels a little guilty that the junior doctor has been looking on without getting his hands on this time. Normally he would have asked the resident to close up and to end the surgery, but today he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to give anyone reason to come after Hyunshik.

“Sorry,” he mumbles to him as he puts in stitches to close up the stump. When he’s finally done, Dr. Kang starts the procedure to bring Eunhee out of anaesthesia and Jongin watches them wheel her out. He stands there in his scrubs for a while, bracing himself for what he has to do now. He knows he did the right thing, but he can’t help the worry and guilt that rises up inside him. What he’s just done has changed the course of her life forever.

Jongin meets Mr. and Mrs. Cha outside the recovery room. They look at him with hopeful eyes and prayers still hang in the air around them. He swallows the lump in his throat. He tells them Eunhee made it through surgery and although she’s still in critical condition, they think she’ll pull through.

“What about her leg?” Mr. Cha asks.

Jongin looks at them, struggling to find words. His hesitation confirms their worst fears.

“I’m afraid the injuries to Eunhee’s leg were just too severe,” he begins. He wants to whisper it, wants to shrink away or better yet to disappear completely, but he’s the doctor and he has to sound like he knows what he’s doing. 

When he tells them he had to amputate the leg, Eunhee’s mother wails and sinks to the floor, her hands weakly beating against the floor. Mr. Cha stares at him, face slack with disbelief.

“But,” Jongin says, swallows, tries not to sound desperate. “But the amputation was below the knee, and there is an excellent chance she will walk quite normally with a prosthesis…”

Mr. Cha isn’t hearing him. “What did you say?” he asks. Jongin takes a small instinctive step back at the anger in his voice.

“We had to amputate her leg to save her life,” he repeats, and forces himself to believe his own words. Jongin made the decision to amputate based on his medical knowledge. He knew what he was doing in the OR, so why is he doubting himself now?

“No,” Mr. Cha says. “What about her running? She was on the junior national track team. She was on her way to the Olympics. You promised me you would save her leg!”

There is such accusation in his voice. Jongin takes a deep breath to steel himself. He did not promise to save her leg. He would never have done that for this exact reason. He promised to do everything he could, but saying that to Eunhee’s father would sound petty, like he was trying to make excuses, a child trying to get out of trouble.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s the only thing he can say. He waits a few beats, then says a few more things about Eunhee needing a lot of support during the next few weeks, but they don’t seem to be hearing much of what he says. They’re both looking at him now. He can see the anger, the blame in their eyes. Why hasn’t he saved Eunhee’s leg? Why has he failed them?

He finishes talking to them and goes back to his office, where he sits on the couch and unlocks and locks his phone repeatedly. It’s not 10 pm yet and he’s on call till 7 tomorrow morning. Usually he would go home and try for a couple of hours’ sleep between calls, but he knows he won’t be able to rest. There’s a tangled mess in his head and heart. He unlocks his phone again. It’s on the contact screen for Taeyeon. Her face looks warmly at him from the photo he’d taken of her specially for it. She’s in her doctor’s coat, her white hair drawn into its usual elegant bun, the smile-lines wreathing her eyes. She’s told him so many times she’ll always be there for him, any time he needs her, no matter what it is, no matter how trivial it seems to Jongin.

Jongin had thought he’d never be able to trust again, but Taeyeon changed that. She helped him when he was broken and didn’t know where to turn. He trusts her more than anyone else in the world. But it’s nearly 10 at night, and she’ll be at home with her husband. She might already be sleeping. How can he bother her just because he’s having a stupid meltdown over an amputation? She’s done dozens in her career. It’s not even Jongin’s first one. It’s just that this one, this one...

His hands are tight around his phone. The pain inside him pushes hard at the backs of his eyes.  _ Any time you need me, I’ll be here for you,  _ she’d told him.  _ Promise me you’ll never forget that.  _ And he had promised.

He taps the call button and brings his phone to his ear. He closes his eyes as it rings. Nearly all of him is hoping that she’s turned her phone off for the night, because then at least he tried and he didn’t end up bothering her, but the call connects after five rings.

“Jongin?” Taeyeon’s warm, familiar voice is filled with both kindness and concern, and at the sound of it Jongin nearly comes undone. He presses his free hand desperately against his eyes. "Is something wrong?”

He swallows hard. Of course she knows something’s up. He never calls this late. He has to reassure her quick, because he’s come to her with far worse than this and he doesn’t want her to think something is really wrong. “It’s nothing much,” he manages, but the tremor in his voice betrays him.

“Jongin,” Taeyeon says gently. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

“Sorry to call you so late,” he whispers.

“Hey, no. You know you can call me any time. Tell me what’s upset you.”

“I just did an amputation,” he says. “A 17-year-old girl. She was a star track athlete, according to her parents…” he has to stop and swallow again. Their faces rise in front of him. Their eyes. Angry with him. Accusing him. Blaming him for all that’s wrong. And then the faces in his memory are not Eunhee’s parents but Jongin’s parents, but the emotions are the same, the anger, the blame. The hand not holding his phone tightens on his thigh, nails digging in.

“Do you want to talk me through it?” A professional note comes into Taeyeon’s voice, and he clutches at it like a lifebelt. He takes her through the case step by step, sinking into the medical terminology, trying to escape from the faces that haunt him. Taeyeon asks him a couple of questions, and her voice helps to ground him a little, though not as much as if she was with him, holding his hand in hers and stroking it with her thumb. He rubs his hand along his jeans instead, trying to replicate the sensation.

“You did the right thing,” Taeyeon tells him when he’s done. “From what you’ve told me, that leg couldn’t be saved. With such circulation loss, if you hadn’t amputated, it would have gone necrotic and killed her.” She pauses. “But you knew that, right?”

“Yes,” Jongin’s voice is small. “That’s why I did it.”

“Then it’s not the amputation that’s upsetting you, is it?”

He shakes his head, then remembers she can’t see him. “No. It’s her parents. The...the way they looked at me...it was…it was just like...” 

His voice is cracking. He can’t go on. He starts to cry. He tries not to let it come through the phone. He presses a clenched fist to his mouth and holds the phone slightly away from his face. He doesn’t want her to hear him, but he wants to hear her.

“Okay,” he hears. “I understand. You don’t have to talk. It’s okay, Jongin. Cry if you need to.”

He wants to tell her he’s sorry for being such a stupid baby, but he can’t speak, because the silent sobs jerking his body are too strong. She’s so patient with him. She keeps on talking, telling him simple things about her day, things he can imagine her doing. She describes the paper she’s submitting to an international orthopaedic journal, how she visited Taehee and her twin baby granddaughters in the afternoon, and how the winter flowers in her greenhouse are blooming. Many long minutes later when Jongin finally finds his voice again, he whispers, “thank you.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah,” he says, though his voice is thick with the tears he’s shed. “Yeah, I’m okay now.”

“Would you like me to come over?”

“No,” he rubs a hand over his wet face. “No, I’m good. Really.” He gives a shaky laugh. “I’m still on shift. If you came over here, you’d have a fan club trailing you around. You’re more popular than idol singers around here, you know.”

She laughs and tells him not to exaggerate, and they fall into conversation. He’s able to talk properly now. The tears have taken the edge off the deep hurt inside him. He promises he’ll come over and look at her winter greenhouse soon, and that he’ll go visit Taehee and her babies too. It’s nearly eleven when she’s finally convinced he’s okay enough to be let go. He probably should feel guilty that he kept her up so late, but it’s just such a relief to have gotten all that painful tangle out of him, and Taeyeon assures him that she will sleep in tomorrow morning.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she tells him, and her gentle voice is filled with more love than he ever heard from his own mother. “I’m so proud of you, Jongin. Never forget that.”


	14. January 12th

Kyungsoo is drawn from the black-and-white image of a chest x-ray by cries of alarm from the CT scanning room. He jumps up from his chair and crosses his office to throw his door open and immediately sees what has thrown his techs into sudden panic. The patient they’ve slid into the large white ring of the CT scanner is having a grand mal seizure. Two female techs are standing pinned to the walls while the patient jerks and thrashes on the narrow scanner bed, staring at him with round eyes. Kyungsoo doesn’t waste time verbalizing the curses that are running through his head.

He dials the switchboard and snaps out an order for nurses and orderlies to get the hell into radiology and get this seizing man back to the ED where he belongs. He hangs up and crosses the small space between the door and the scanner to grab the patient’s thrashing shoulders before the seizure hurls him off the scanner bed and onto the hard floor, potentially breaking himself even more than whatever is already wrong with him. As he does so, the order he just dialed through the switchboard goes out over the hospital intercom system in a calm female voice. _Nurse and transport team to radiology, stat; nurse and transport team to radiology, stat._

“Chanmi, Jinsoo, help me keep him on the bed,” he calls to the techs, who thankfully stop trying to imitate wallpaper and actually come over and do something useful. 

“What’s this guy here for?” Kyungsoo asks over the jerking body. He’s not had to deal with patients having medical emergencies in front of him since he was a resident. Patients aren’t supposed to get transferred to radiology alone unless the transferring doctor is positive they’re stable, it’s a hard-and-fast hospital rule. Any chance of a seizure and this man should have had a doctor come with him to radiology to deal with any possible crisis. This isn’t supposed to happen. 

“Upper chest trauma.” Chanmi’s voice jerks as her body is jolted about by the thrashing patient below her hands. “They wanted a chest scan, that’s all I know.”

Upper chest trauma doesn’t explain a seizure. Kyungsoo could go look the patient’s records up on his computer, but that would mean leaving the techs alone and they’re already having enough trouble with the three of them - the two techs are both slightly built and Kyungsoo isn’t exactly the heftiest guy around either. This shouldn’t be Kyungsoo’s problem, he thinks grimly as he puts all his strength into keeping the man’s shoulders in the general vicinity of the bed. 

“He’s lost control of his bowels,” Jinsoo announces, and Kyungsoo sees that there are feces smeared down his hand and left side. It’s getting on the scanner bed too. Great.

It seems like forever before the nurses and transporters arrive. They expertly haul the seizing man onto a wheeled gurney with walled sides and straps and start racing him back to the ED where they have the facilities to treat seizures, leaving Kyungsoo with a pair of shaken (in more ways than one) radiology techs, and a CT scanner bed smeared with an unspeakable brown substance. Kyungsoo stands there and mentally tears whichever ED resident sent this patient down here unattended to shreds. What is Minseok doing? He promised he’d talk to his stupid residents. 

He’s about to tell Chanmi and Jinsoo to clean up when something strikes him. He would have expected the feces to smell like - well, like feces - but instead, he smells something...sweet? Slowly he leans closer to the mess. The techs are looking askance at him, but Kyungsoo sniffs it, then puts his finger on it and brings it close to his face. One of them makes a slightly strangled noise at this, but Kyungsoo looks up, shaking his head.

“It’s not feces,” he tells them. “It’s chocolate. He must have been holding a chocolate bar in his hand.”

The techs look relieved, but Kyungsoo frowns deeply. A leading cause of seizures is hypoglycaemia - low blood sugar. Chocolate is high in sugar. Did some moronic ED resident send a hypoglycaemic patient to radiology armed with a chocolate bar to eat in case they felt themselves going low? 

Kyungsoo is so done with this bullshit. He hates confrontations and he hates arguing, but this is the last straw. He leaves the radiology department and runs down the hallways after the seizing patient, catching up just as they wheel him back into the ED. Residents and nurses come running to start resuscitation, and Kyungsoo steps back a little to give them room. He eyes the patient’s brown-smeared hand. Yes, he can see the chocolate bar wrapper in his clenched and jerking fist. 

“Who is this? Where did he come from?” Kyungsoo turns to the ED resident speaking to him, a young woman who has spotted his white coat and ID badge. She looks barely old enough to be out of high school. Probably a first year resident.

“He was in radiology for a CT chest when he started seizing,” Kyungsoo tells her. He sounds much calmer than he feels. “So I sent him back.”

The resident frowns. “Who sent him up?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t know, and he wants to know just as much as the resident. He heads to the nursing station and asks the charge nurse to find out.

“Hypoglycemia caused by insulin overdose,” the nurse tells him. “The chest trauma was caused by the fall when he collapsed. Looks like the patient’s blood sugars were normal when he was sent up.”

“Who sent him?”

“Dr. Mae,” she tells him. Kyungsoo recognises the name. He’s talked to her over the phone several times, though never met her face to face, so he hasn’t a clue what she looks like. Thankfully, Minseok chooses this moment to appear beside him.

“Hi, Kyungsoo,” he says, a note of surprise in his voice. “What brings you here?”

Kyungsoo turns to his friend, trying to keep his anger under control. He knows this isn’t directly Minseok’s fault, but he’s the chief of the emergency department. He should be teaching his staff better than this. “See that?” he snaps, pointing at the jerking patient on the gurney across the room. He's now half-obscured by drawn curtains, the seizure still ongoing. “That’s what was in my CT scanner.”

Minseok turns to look at the seizing patient. Kyungsoo continues. “Apparently one of your residents thought it was a good idea to send a patient who’d overdosed on insulin to radiology with a chocolate bar to keep his blood sugars up.”

Minseok’s head snaps back around. “What?”

“The blood sugars were normal when he was sent,” the nurse behind the station speaks up, sounding a little uncomfortable. “I’m sure she thought he had stabilised - ”

“If she thought that, why did she bother to give him a fucking chocolate bar?” Kyungsoo asks her, perhaps a little more angrily than is fair, but he’s so pissed off.

“Aecha, could you look up the treatment and results for me?” Minseok’s voice is much more polite, but his eyes are dark. 

“He was on IV concentrated glucose for three hours...oh, I see. He was transferred here from a smaller hospital via ambulance. They started the glucose treatment. He was stable, alert and talking when he was here, and his blood sugars were normal.” She spins the screen around for them to look at. Kyungsoo takes in the glucose dosage and his eyes widen. 

“Three hours of concentrated glucose and his blood sugars were normal? They should have been sky-high!”

Minseok has obviously reached the same conclusion. The insulin overdose must have been so massive that even three hours of IV glucose had only normalised them. The resident must have simply seen the normal bloodwork results, taken the patient off the IV glucose, and failed to take into account that as soon as the glucose in the patient's system was used, his blood sugars would crash again. This Dr. Mae is either negligent or an idiot.

“I’ll talk to her,” Minseok tells him grimly. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

“Don’t be sorry to me,” Kyungsoo growls. “Be sorry to the patient. He’s the one who’s ended up seizing.”

Minseok runs a hand through his hair and nods. He looks so stressed out, and Kyungsoo immediately feels sorry for taking out his frustration on his friend. Yes, Minseok is in charge of his residents, but he can’t be expected to know everything that goes on, all the time. His anger fizzles away, and he’s about to apologize for being so snappy when a small group of young doctors rushes up to them - two junior residents and an intern. 

“Dr. Kim, can you help us with a patient?” one of the residents asks. “We’ve been trying for an hour and we just don’t know what to do any more.” All three of them are looking at his friend pleadingly. Kyungsoo looks at their youthful faces and wonders, _are residents getting younger, or am I getting older_? At the thought, he’s suddenly reminded that yes, he is indeed getting older, as today is January 12th. His 31st birthday. These kids are nearly ten years younger than him. He sighs as Minseok turns to them and asks them to give him a medical presentation of the problem. He’s about to leave his friend and head back to radiology, but what he hears next makes him pause, both eyebrows rising towards his hairline.

“The patient is a twenty-three year old male with a chief complaint that he is radioactive…”

“Wait,” Minseok cuts the resident off. “Wait a minute. He says he is radioactive?”

“Yes.”

Kyungsoo feels a slight grin tug at the corner of his mouth as Minseok’s eyes slide sidewards to meet his. He decides not to go back to radiology just yet after all. This sounds interesting.

“Does he have any exposure to radioactivity?” Minseok asks.

“No. He’s just a regular guy off the streets.”

Kyungsoo can practically see Minseok give up on the proper medical presentation he’s just asked the juniors for. 

“Anything unusual about him? Like, is he crazy?”

Kyungsoo fights his grin as the residents have some internal conflict about this. One thinks he is, one thinks he isn’t. They’re still arguing when a nurse comes running up. 

“Dr. Kim,” she says. “Can you help over here? I’ve got a patient showing runs of VT and I’m worried she’ll crash at any moment -”

This obviously trumps the “radioactive” patient. Minseok turns a tense face to Kyungsoo. “Can you sort these guys out for me? Thanks man, I owe you one.” Kyungsoo doesn't even have time to react before Minseok is running after the nurse. Kyungsoo watches him go, dumbfounded. He turns back to the two junior residents and the intern, who are all looking at him curiously. Their eyes are saying, _who the heck are you?_ Though of course they’re too polite to say it aloud.

“Um, hi. I’m Dr. Do,” he says awkwardly. He’s not about to admit he’s a radiologist. ED doctors - okay, pretty much all hands-on doctors - have a tendency to look down on his specialty. There are numerous jokes about radiologists and why they chose a specialty that doesn’t involve actually treating patients, and he doesn’t need these kids giving him attitude. “So...you’re not sure if he’s crazy or not. Anything on the physical exam?”

“No, he looks normal.” The young man whose name-badge reads Dr. Min Jiyong, apparently the most senior of the small group, takes the lead again.

“So what did you guys do?”

“We drew labs but they’re all normal. We even got a chest X-ray but that’s normal too.”

Kyungsoo grinds his teeth and only just manages not to ask why the fuck they ordered a CXR on a patient with absolutely no indications for one. This is just his life in a nutshell.

“Well, what do you think you should do with him?” he asks instead. He remembers active questioning from when he was a junior. Don’t just give them the answers, make them think. It also helps hide the fact that Kyungsoo has no idea what to do with the patient either.

“I want to discharge him. Kyungri,” Jiyong gestures at the intern, “wants a psych consult.”

“Why don’t you get a psych consult then?”

“That’s the problem,” Jiyong makes a frustrated gesture. “He refuses to see a psychiatry resident and he won’t leave.”

“Why not?”

“He wants a test for radioactivity. He’s already been to two hospitals and they just blew him off. They told him they don’t have a test for radioactivity. I told him we don’t have a test for radioactivity either. But he says he won’t leave until he gets one. Dr. Do, please will you see him?”

Kyungsoo considers refusing. This isn't really his problem. He could retreat to the peace and quiet of his office and let the ED deal with this. Then Minseok’s tired, stressed-out face comes back in his mind, making him feel guilty for taking out his anger on his friend. Besides, he’s kind of intrigued.

He goes to the exam room and observes the patient for a moment or two before introducing himself. The young man is acting nervous and suspicious, but not extraordinarily so. He doesn’t seem crazy, Kyungsoo thinks, but you never know. He asks him a few medical questions and then the young man repeats his desire to have a test for radioactivity. Two hospitals have already failed him. He’s determined not to leave until he gets one. 

He leaves the room for a minute to talk to the residents. Jiyong asks, “What do you think?”

Kyungsoo shrugs. “I don't know if he's crazy or not, but I think it’s pretty clear he is not going to leave until he gets a test for radioactivity.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“I’m going to give him a test for radioactivity.” 

Now they’re looking at him like he’s the one who is crazy. There’s no such thing as a routine test for radioactivity. 

Kyungsoo walks back into the room and takes his pager off his belt. He approaches the patient and tells him to stand facing the wall. He makes up some medical-sounding nonsense about a “level A radioactivity test” and presses the answering button on his pager. Pagers beep and display messages, but holding down the answering button makes a static hiss like an open radio channel - or a Geiger counter. 

He runs the pager up and down his back and the patient hears the continuous static hiss. Then he asks the patient to turn around and hold out his arms as if at an airport frisking stop, and runs the pager down his limbs and the front of his body. When he’s done, he releases the button, gives the anxious young man a smile and says, “Nothing. No sign of radioactivity. You’re all clear.”

The young man heaves a huge sigh of relief. Kyungsoo can practically see the weight lifting from his shoulders. He beams at Kyungsoo and grabs his hand in both of his to shake it up and down, thanking him profusely.

Kyungsoo has never met a more thankful patient. The young man walks out of the room and his gratitude extends to everyone, doctors, nurses, orderlies. He shakes hands with everyone and leaves before they can even finish the paperwork, practically walking on air.

His small audience are amazed. Jiyong asks, “How did you do that?”

In response, Kyungsoo takes his pager and tests the resident for radioactivity the same way. “That’s the new ‘level A radioactivity test’. You’re clean, too.”

Dr. Min looks amazed, and the intern and the other junior start to laugh and applaud. Kyungsoo spots Minseok grinning at him from the door of an exam room. His friend gives him a thumbs up before disappearing back inside. Kyungsoo makes his way out of the emergency department, receiving several more thumbs-up and claps on the back on his way out. It seems he’s just unwittingly become the new hero of the emergency department, he thinks ruefully as he retreats back to the peace and quiet of his office. Radiology is operating as per usual again, all traces of smeared chocolate cleaned off the CT scanner bed, and Kyungsoo forgets about the “radioactive” patient until Minseok calls him several hours later.

“Dr. Do, you’re our latest celebrity,” his friend teases. “The 'grade A radioactivity test' will be passed down in ED history.”

Kyungsoo makes a noise between a laugh and a groan. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be sure to avoid the ED for the next century or so.”

“Are you working tonight?” Minseok asks.

“No, I’ll be done at five. Why?”

“Well, it’s a very special day today." Minseok’s voice goes sing-song, and Kyungsoo is reminded for the second time that it’s his birthday. He’s astonished that Minseok remembered. “Let’s go out and celebrate,” Minseok continues. “Jongdae was just here for a consult. He’s on call but he says he’ll come if we stay close to the hospital. I’ll ask Songmi if she and Yixing are free too - you know Yixing, right? The oncologist?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Kyungsoo says, a little taken aback by this sudden organization of his life, “but -”

“Great, who else can I ask...ah! You know Park Chanyeol and Byun Baekhyun, right? I’ll -”

“No, no, Minseok, that’s enough people,” Kyungsoo begs. “Those two are like mental cases when they get together. You and Jongdae and Yixing and Songmi will be plenty.”

“Okay,” Minseok agrees. There’s a note of triumph in his voice, and Kyungsoo realises that by threatening him with Chanyeol and Baekhyun, he’s just made Kyungsoo agree to do something social. With four other people. A fairly significant event for Kyungsoo. He sighs, but agrees to meet Minseok and the others at the entrance just after five. There goes his plan of spending the night completing the Forbidden Legend quest in Skyrim, a treat he’d been saving for himself for his birthday. But for some reason, Kyungsoo can’t find it in himself to be disappointed. He likes solitude and enjoys his own company, and he sincerely doesn’t mind being alone on his birthday, despite how sad it might sound to others. It's just another day to him. But at the same time, having his birthday remembered and people actually wanting to join him for it feels kind of nice, too. 

At ten past five he finally manages to hand over the backlog of imaging to his colleague. He changes out of his white coat and into a thick outdoor jacket, and makes his way down to the entrance to meet Minseok and the others. He sees Jongdae first. The ob-gyn is wearing a red padded jacket, skinny jeans and backpack, and a few stray curls of brown hair are escaping from beneath a knitted bobble hat. He’s leaning on the information desk as he has a serious-looking conversation with the staff member behind it. He looks more like a lost college student than a doctor. Kyungsoo glances around the foyer but can’t see Minseok. He’s not surprised. It will probably take his friend a good half-hour to extract himself from the ED. It would be shocking if he was actually on time.

He walks towards Jongdae just as the woman behind the desk smiles at him and hands him a business card. Jongdae takes it and thanks her, then turns, catching sight of Kyungsoo. “Hey!" he says, face brightening as he smiles. "Happy birthday."

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo says back, a little awkwardly. He’s never really understood the point of making a big fuss just because he happened to be born. He looks curiously at the card Jongdae is holding in his gloved hand. It’s the hospital business card.

“What do you want that for?”

Jongdae gives a faintly embarrassed laugh. “I saw a guy looking kind of lost on the sidewalk outside, so I went out to see if he was okay, and he asked me the address of the hospital. I told him it was right here, but he didn’t want to come in - he just wanted to know the street address. And I realised I don’t actually know the address. So I had to come to the information desk to find out.”

Kyungsoo grins. “You’ve worked here for what, six years?”

“Seven if you count intern year,” Jongdae admits, starting towards the doors. Kyungsoo follows him to keep in step. “But I always just call it Hangang University Hospital...everyone knows what that means, and you can navigate with that too. There’s no point in knowing the street address.”

The doors slide open, and they both flinch as a wind like blades of ice attacks any scrap of unprotected skin. It hasn’t snowed for a couple of days and the cleared mounds of snow at the edges of the sidewalk have gone grey and rock-hard. Kyungsoo takes a few rapid steps back into the sanctuary of the heated foyer. There’s no need for him to freeze to death just because Jongdae’s way too nice for his own good. He watches Jongdae trot up to a man bundled up in so many ragged garments he looks almost circular and hand the card over with a polite bow. The man is probably homeless, by the looks of him. Kyungsoo watches through the glass doors as they exchange a few words, and then the homeless man puts the business card in a pocket and trundles off. Jongdae jogs back inside, cheekbones already stung red by the wind.

“What did he want to know the address for?” Kyungsoo asks. 

Jongdae laughs. “He said that every time he’s picked up drunk by the cops and brought to the ED, the doctors ask him if he knows where he is, but he never knows the address. Now next time he comes in he can tell them. I told him it’s fine to just say “the hospital” but he’s adamant that he has to recite the exact address."

"Ah," Kyungsoo says, wondering briefly what it would be like to be someone as genuinely kind as Jongdae. Probably rather inconvenient, he concludes, as Minseok and Yixing appear.

It turns out Yixing’s wife is on shift, so she can’t join them. Kyungsoo shakes the oncologist’s hand as the man gives him a dimpled smile. They’ve met a few times, because Minseok is friends with both of them, but they don’t know each other well. He wonders why Yixing even wants to celebrate his birthday. Maybe it’s just because Minseok asked him.

They walk a couple of blocks to a nearby restaurant - they have to stay close because Jongdae is on call. There isn’t much chance to talk through the icy wind, but Kyungsoo manages to huddle close to Minseok and murmur an apology for being so snappy in the ED earlier.

“Don’t worry about it,” Minseok says immediately. “You were right to be angry. That particular doctor has caused trouble more than once.” He shakes his head, looking tireder than ever. “I’m going to have to do something about her. I thought the last talking-to I gave her sank in, but it seems not.”

Kyungsoo feels grateful that he’s not the chief of his department, despite his mother’s dreams for him. Being the chief seems like far more trouble than it’s worth to him. He’d rather just be able to get on with his job.

In the BBQ restaurant everyone sheds their outdoor layers and sits around a sizzling grill set into the table. As the youngest of the group Kyungsoo should be in charge of grilling, but as it’s his birthday Jongdae takes charge instead. Conversation turns to work, as is only natural when they’re all in the same profession. Kyungsoo feels his ears go red as Minseok relates the story of the “grade A radioactivity test” to much laughter from the others. This inspires a bunch of other stories about weird patients they’ve come across. Kyungsoo feels himself relaxing more as the evening goes on. It’s not too loud and nobody is drinking much, and it’s just nice to be with friends in a warm place on this freezing winter evening. 

Later on, Yixing asks Minseok if he ever found a psychologist, and Kyungsoo looks up in surprise. He’d almost forgotten that Minseok had asked him that. Minseok must have asked Yixing too.

“Yeah,” Minseok says, flicking a quick smile at Kyungsoo. “Kyungsoo recommended me one.”

“Did you go see him?” Kyungsoo asks.

“I had one session,” Minseok says. “It was...weird.”

“Weird how?” Kyungsoo wants to know.

“Your friend Wu Yifan is an unusual person,” Minseok tells him. “I guess I should have known, since the recommendation came from you.” Kyungsoo prods his friend’s shoulder indignantly.

“He's Chinese?” Yixing asks. "Mainland Chinese?"

Minseok shrugs, looking at Kyungsoo.

"From Guangzhou via Canada, if I remember right," Kyungsoo says. Yixing nods and visibly spaces out, eyes going distant.

Kyungsoo eyes him a little curiously, then turns back to Minseok. “Don’t give up,” he says. “You should go again. I know Yifan looks kind of scary, but he’s a great guy once you get to know him.”

“To be honest, it wasn’t Yifan who was the problem,” Minseok admits. “It’s me. I just...couldn’t do it. I only went because Jangmi - that's my ex-wife,” he says for Jongdae’s benefit, “told me to. She says she’ll sue for custody if I don’t.”

“Really?” Jongdae looks horrified. “Why?”

“I work too much,” Minseok says. “I don’t give the girls enough time, and I let them down. She wants me to either be fully present or not be around at all, for their sakes.” He sighs deeply. “She’s right, but it turns out I have some...deeper issues about the whole thing than I thought. I figured that out when the first session went south.”

“Kyungsoo is right,” Jongdae says. His gentle brown eyes are serious. “Your daughters are wonderful girls. Chorong hasn’t stopped talking about them since the Christmas party. Give the therapy another chance. You can’t lose them.”

“I know,” Minseok agrees, but his face is troubled. Kyungsoo wonders just how badly the session must have gone, if it made his friend look like this. After a few beats of silence Minseok changes the subject.

“Chorong was a huge hit with Nayoung and Eunbi, too,” he tells Jongdae. “They’re desperate for a little sister now. You have younger children too, don’t you?”

Kyungsoo tunes out as Jongdae and Minseok start talking about their kids and making plans to get the families together sometime. He’s sure the children are great kids, but he’s completely uninterested. He tugs Yixing back from whatever daydream he's wandering in and talks to him instead, wondering how long he’s been in Korea. It turns out that Yixing was on a residency exchange program with a Chinese university hospital and fell in love with one of the ED nurses, and ended up marrying her and moving to Korea permanently. Yixing's eyes shine as he talks about his wife, and Kyungsoo stifles a sigh.

All three of the other men here are married - or in Minseok’s case, was married, and the circumstances that broke up that marriage are hardly usual. His thoughts begin to drift. He wonders if Yifan is married now. He’d found a kindred spirit in the enigmatic man, despite their apparent differences. Maybe he should contact Yifan again sometime, see how he’s doing. Or not. Why would Yifan want to hear from Kyungsoo, it’s years since university and he’s got a life of his own. Maybe Kyungsoo just needs to force himself to see a girl, for his mom’s sake.

The idea makes him want to crawl away somewhere and hide forever.

Yixing answers a phone call, and Kyungsoo is pulled from his spiraling thoughts when the oncologist’s face crumples. He puts a hand over his eyes and says something low into the phone that Kyungsoo can’t quite hear. Kyungsoo is both startled and alarmed. That’s real grief he sees in Yixing.

“Is everything okay?” he asks when Yixing pockets his phone again.

Yixing nods, then stands up without meeting anyone’s eyes and walks in the direction of the bathrooms. Minseok and Jongdae are deep in discussion over the value of learning a classical instrument in a child’s development and don’t appear to even notice him go. Kyungsoo sits tensely for a minute or two while warring factions battle inside him. It’s obvious that whatever Yixing heard on the phone just now was bad news, and the depth of grief he saw in that wide-open face is worrying. But he doesn’t know Yixing that well, and he doesn’t know if going after him would be intrusive. Yixing might not want to talk about it, he might want to be alone. But what if he does need someone right now? His wife is on an ED shift, he won’t be able to talk to her. Kyungsoo sits on pins and needles while all these thoughts rush through him. Finally he makes a decision and stands up, telling himself that it’s fine if Yixing tells him to go away, but he’ll never know if he doesn’t go. 

He looks into the men’s room, but it’s empty. Puzzled, he walks further down the corridor and past the kitchen to find that there’s a door leading to the outside. He opens it and finds himself in a narrow alley. Yixing is sitting on a stack of empty milk crates, resting his elbows on his knees with his head hanging down.

“Um,” Kyungsoo says awkwardly. Yixing looks up, but Kyungsoo can’t see his expression, it’s too dark. He wraps his arms around himself and speaks nervously. “I can see something serious has happened,” he says, “but it’s bloody freezing out here. Will you come back inside?”

“Oh,” Yixing sounds a little dazed. “You’re right.” He stands up and follows Kyungsoo back into the hallway. Kyungsoo shuts the night out behind him, and the noise of the kitchen clatters through the wall. This end of the corridor is dimly lit, but at least it’s warm. Yixing leans against the wall, and Kyungsoo hovers. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he puts them in his pockets and stands against the other wall so that there’s space between them.

“Um...so...do you want to talk about it?” he asks. He wants to sink into the ground and die. He’s thirty years old - no, thirty-one now, but he’s still so horribly bad at this kind of thing. He doesn't know if he'll ever get any better at it. He wants to help, but getting past the awkwardness is so damn hard. “I mean, only if you want to. Just, I know that it helps. Sometimes.”

Yixing gives him a quick, sad smile. “Thank you. It’s nothing to worry about. I just heard a young patient I’ve been treating for three years has just died. She’s been in palliative care for weeks. I was expecting it. I’ve been trying to prepare myself. But…” he trails off, and Kyungsoo sees him swallow hard. “But it didn’t help. I got too attached to her. I never learn.”

Kyungsoo has sometimes wondered how doctors who treat long cases deal with having patients die on them. It’s one of the things he likes about radiology that he doesn’t have ongoing cases like this. He’d always come to the conclusion that those doctors must be really good at being detached, at striking the balance between caring enough to help people and not caring too much to suffer when they lose them. Only looking at Yixing now, he can see that he was wrong. Some doctors aren’t so great at finding the balance after all.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly. “What was she like?”

“Her name was Sooyoung. She was fifteen when I first met her. She was so cheerful, so positive. She loved sports, and camping, and watching movies with her friends. She never once complained about chemotherapy, not even when it made her sick.” He rubs the back of his hand across his eyes. “She refused to believe she was dying, even at the end. She trusted me with all her heart. Sometimes she’d even comfort me. “I know you’re helping me, Dr. Zhang,” she would say. “I know you’ll make me better.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.” 

Kyungsoo has never heard a person sound so sad. He pushes away from his side of the wall and moves closer to put a hand on Yixing’s arm. He tries to think of something to say, something that will take that desperate unhappiness from the oncologist’s face, but then he realises that there isn’t anything he can say that will do that. While he stands there and grips Yixing’s arm in the hope that it will somehow transfer some support to the other man, he remembers Jongdae during last month’s Morbidity and Mortality conference. He’d looked so lost, so young and uncertain, even though he’d done everything right. Kyungsoo hadn’t known what to do then either, but despite the fact that all he’d done was sit there and listen, Jongdae had thanked him, as if he’d actually helped. Being there, listening - those are things Kyungsoo can do easily. So he does. 

After a few minutes of quietness during which Kyungsoo isn’t sure if the other man is actually crying or just trying not to, Yixing rubs his hand over his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil the mood,” he says. Kyungsoo shakes his head.

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” he says honestly, and Yixing must hear the sincerity in him, because there’s relief in the smile he gives him. “You can go if you want,” Kyungsoo says. “Don’t feel like you have to stay.”

“No, I want to,” Yixing says. He pushes away from the wall. “It helps to be with people. Let’s go and see if Minseok and Jongdae have stopped singing the praises of their offspring yet.”

Kyungsoo laughs. “That will probably never happen,” he warns as they go back out into the brightness and warmth of the restaurant to rejoin the table.

\---

“Dr. Park, could you take a look in room 614 when you get a chance?” a nurse asks as she hurries past. Chanyeol nods. He’s not sure she sees it, but it doesn’t matter. She trusts that he will visit whoever it is in room 614 and Chanyeol knows she wouldn’t ask him for assistance without a good reason. He follows the corridor towards the room, the sunshiney fields painted on the wall on his left contrasting sharply with the dark dreariness of the weather he sees out the windows to his right. At least it isn’t snowing today, he thinks, and the thought takes him straight to Baekhyun. Chanyeol’s steps unconsciously slow as the image of his best friend motionless and half-frozen on the footbridge a week ago, snow building up on his shoulders and bare arms as he gazed down into the emptiness below, takes over.

Finding Baekhyun like that has shaken Chanyeol to the core. To find Baekhyun, of all people, like that - his best friend who he thought he knew so well, who has always been so bright, so happy - was like being slapped in the face. Sure, he's been moody lately, but Chanyeol had put it down to stress and assumed Baekhyun would pull through it soon enough. Now he can see that he was wrong. Something more than simple stress is dragging Baekhyun down, but no matter what he does, he just can't seem to break through Baekhyun's walls. He's locking Chanyeol out, and he just doesn't understand why. He's worried that Baekhyun might actually be seriously depressed, but he can't force him to open up. When he tries, Baekhyun just retreats further into his shell. Chanyeol is scared that if he pushes too hard, he'll end up driving him away, the exact opposite of what he wants.

He’d been scared enough that afternoon that he’d made Baekhyun come home with him despite his fear of being found out. Once, his best friend would have been full of enthusiasm and questions for his “flatmate”, but all he’d done was greet Yeonseok with weary politeness, refused offers of food, and fallen asleep on Chanyeol’s shoulder not even five minutes into the movie they’d put on. Even Yeonseok, who had never met Baekhyun before, had been concerned. Chanyeol wishes he could keep Baekhyun with him 24/7, at least until Nari gets back from her work trip, but his friend is an adult and he can't force it. After the movie was over, he'd asked Baekhyun again what had been going on with him that afternoon. Baekhyun had assured Chanyeol he’s not suicidal, that he wasn't intending on jumping, that he just wasn’t thinking straight about wearing a jacket. All Chanyeol can do is hope Baekhyun is telling the truth and keep as much of an eye on him as he possibly can.

He shakes his head and forces his worry into the background. He should smile and be positive when at work. He knows that his smiles and cheerful attitude can really brighten the day for his patients and their parents. When he gets to room 614, he stops and looks in through the small window. A child, maybe ten or eleven years old, is sitting up in the bed alone. There are no parents or family gathered around to keep them company. The nameplate on the door says Nam Dohyun. Chanyeol knocks on the door before he enters.

“Hi, Dohyun,” he says and gives the boy a bright smile. “I’m Dr. Park, but you can call me Chanyeol.”

Dohyun glances up at him warily. His fingers tighten on the notepad in front of him, and Chanyeol sees that both wrists are bandaged. His heart sinks, but he keeps his expression cheerful. “How are you doing today?”

Dohyun doesn’t respond, or even give a sign of having heard the question. He lowers his gaze back to his notepad and continues writing. There’s silence in the small room except for the sound of pen on paper, and Chanyeol regrets not getting more specific information from the nurse before coming. He doesn’t know exactly what she wants him to do here, but he suspects it has something to do with the reason behind the bandages on Dohyun’s wrists.

Instead of letting the awkward atmosphere grow, Chanyeol excuses himself and tells Dohyun he'll be back soon. He tries to locate the nurse who’d asked him to check in on Dohyun and finds her in room 627, changing the bandage on a young boy whose wound is infected. 

“Nurse Lee, can I speak with you when you’re done here?” he asks. She nods, and Chanyeol takes a few steps away from the room rather than observe her working. When she’s done she finds him and sends him a smile.

“What is it?”

“Why did you want me to see Dohyun in 614?”

Her smile slips, replaced by a worried expression. “Ah, yes, sorry. I should have explained, but I had to see to Jinsu. Dohyun is 11 years old. He was admitted yesterday with slit wrists from a suicide attempt, but is otherwise healthy. The problem is that his parents are refusing inpatient psychiatric treatment and want him discharged as soon as possible. They say he’s already seeing a private psychologist and they’ll continue with that, but…” she trails off, and Chanyeol can hear the doubt in her voice. “I’m not happy about it. Dohyun is so withdrawn, and he's actually worse with his parents than with Dr. Choi and the nursing staff. I know you’re busy, but I thought maybe you could talk to him, see if you can get him to open up a bit? You’re so good at being a friend to the kids.”

Chanyeol nods, his initial suspicion on seeing the bandages proven true. Suicide attempt in an 11-year-old. That’s serious. Children that age shouldn’t even think of dying, much less actively try to end their lives. The thought takes him to Baekhyun again, and he has to shake his head to stay present.

“Can't we convince the parents to let us transfer him to the child psychiatric unit?”

Nurse Lee shakes her head. “Trust me, we’ve tried. I've tried, Dr. Choi has tried twice. We even asked Chief Jeong to try, but he didn’t succeed either.” 

Well, that’s that. If even Chief Jeong couldn’t convince the parents, there’s no way anyone will. Continuing to push the issue only risks angering them. 

He returns to Dohyun’s room and finds the young boy in the same position, intently writing in his notebook. Chanyeol knocks again before he enters to alert Dohyun to his presence, but again, the boy doesn’t react much. Chanyeol closes the door after him, pulls the chair closer to the bed, sits down next to it, and waits.

After about half a minute, Dohyun stops his writing and turns to look at Chanyeol. With Dohyun's attention finally on him, Chanyeol leans a little forward and smiles.

“What are you writing about?”

Dohyun promptly covers the page with both hands, pen falling off his lap and onto the blanket. Chanyeol smiles reassuringly. “It’s okay if you don’t want to show me. It's important, isn’t it?”

He leans back against the chair and crosses his legs. His white coat spills down over the sides of the chair, his own notebook almost toppling out of his pocket. Inspired, Chanyeol takes it out and shows it to Dohyun. “This is where I write my important things,” he says, flipping it open to show the scribbled notes he’s taken. His handwriting is practically illegible even to him, and he grins. “I bet you have neater writing than I do.”

Dohyun looks at his haywire scribbles exploding in every direction across the page and the tiniest flicker of a smile touches his lips. He looks back down at his own notebook, comparing their handwriting. Even through the small hands covering the notepad, Chanyeol can see the writing is much neater than his own, which is why he mentioned it. Kids love it when they can do something better than an adult, especially a doctor. He’s pretty sure Dohyun is going to want to show him how much better his handwriting is than Chanyeol's.

The wall clock ticks the seconds away. Just when Chanyeol has counted to 60 and is about to start on another minute, Dohyun slides one hand off his notebook and gently and subtly pushes it a little closer to Chanyeol. He leans closer and exclaims over how pretty Dohyun’s writing is. There’s still no proper smile from Dohyun, but he senses the boy relaxing slightly. The page is filled with a single name, written over and over again. 

“Who's Nam Daehyun?” Chanyeol asks. "Your sister?" Dohyun gives a little snort and shakes his head. “Your brother, then?" It's a more feminine name, but it's possible a boy could have it. Dohyun shakes his head harder this time.

"She's a girl," he whispers. Chanyeol has to strain his ears to hear. This is the first thing Dohyun has said to him since he entered the room.

"Ah," he says, giving the little boy a teasing smile. "A girl you like? Your girlfriend?"

Another tiny flicker of a smile, but Dohyun shakes his head once again. "Me," he says, a tiny bit louder. 

"You...?" Chanyeol repeats when Dohyun doesn't continue.

“Nam Daehyun. She’s me."

For a second Chanyeol is confused.

“You’re Daehyun?” he clarifies, and gets a tiny nod and a pair of nervous eyes fixing on him. 

“Don’t laugh at me,” Dohyun whispers. Chanyeol is not surprised by the request. He has faced enough ridicule as a teenager and experienced enough fear to understand just how awful it is for children to be laughed at. 

He gives Dohyun the most reassuring smile he can find. “It’s a really pretty name,” he says. "It suits you."

In return he gets his first proper smile from Dohyun. He looks so much happier just from that little bit of praise, no longer lifeless and sad as he had been earlier, and Chanyeol looks at him more carefully. His hair is short, but cut haphazardly, as if someone has recently hacked at it with kitchen scissors. His fingernails are painted a pale pink. It’s not noticeable at a glance, but it’s there.

"Do you feel like you're really a girl?" he asks gently. "A girl called Nam Daehyun?"

Dohyun looks at him suspiciously, but when Chanyeol doesn’t say anything more or start laughing, he slowly starts to believe the question is sincere. Chanyeol can see it. Eventually Dohyun gives a slow nod, and watches him closely for his reaction.

Chanyeol smiles, hiding the pain growing sharp inside his chest. “Thanks for telling me. I'm really happy that I know who you are now," he says. "Would you like me to call you Daehyun while you’re here?”

Daehyun's eyes get big. "Yes, please," she whispers.

“Okay then, Daehyun," Chanyeol says, and Daehyun gives a tiny gasp. Chanyeol is sure this is the first time anyone has called her by her chosen name. He suddenly wants to cry, but he smiles again instead.

"How long have you known you were Daehyun?” he asks.

Daehyun pulls the blanket a little closer around her body, but she doesn’t look like his questions are making her uncomfortable. She almost looks relieved. Chanyeol suspects she hasn't been able to discuss this with anyone.

“Forever,” she responds in a small voice. It’s no longer a whisper, but she isn’t talking about this confidently. There is something that prevents her from doing so, someone who probably has given her the idea that it is not okay. 

“Forever is a really long time,” he says. Daehyun nods.

“Do your parents know you’re Daehyun?”

Tears well up in her eyes. “I tried to tell them, but they don’t believe me.”

Chanyeol has to bite down hard inside his lip to prevent his own eyes from filling. “I bet that hurt a lot.”

Daehyun bursts into tears. Chanyeol jumps up and sits on the bed beside her. He opens his arms invitingly, and she flings herself forward and latches onto him, burying her face in his shirt. Chanyeol hugs her, petting her badly-cut hair gently, blinking hard up at the ceiling as his own tears make a bid for freedom. "Oh, sweetheart," he murmurs, the ache in his chest so strong now it feels like it's trying to tear him apart. "It's really, really hard for you, isn't it? It's okay, darling. I got you..."

He keeps murmuring comfort as she sobs into his chest. It's all he can do not to join her. This 11-year-old child feels so wrong in the world that death felt better than continuing to exist in it. He and Yeonseok have talked about the lack of acceptance for sexual and gender diversity in their culture, have discussed the sad statistics, but he has never personally come across a transgender child suicidal for this reason. He has the impulse to tell Daehyun he understands how hard it is to try and conform in a society that doesn’t accept you for who you are, but he knows it wouldn’t be right. Daehyun is struggling with her own issues, and if Chanyeol is completely honest with himself, his own fear is still locking him up tight. Daehyun is braver than he is, to admit who she really is to a stranger, even one like Chanyeol, who knows how to talk to children.

Braver, or perhaps more desperate. 

Besides, he tells himself, Chanyeol isn't a role model for children like Daehyun. He will never know what it feels like to be in the wrong body. They're both outside what's considered normal, they both know the fear and pain of rejection, but their situation isn't the same. He tells himself that, but deep inside he still knows it's an excuse.

It takes about fifteen minutes before she cries herself out. She pulls back from him, sniffing loudly. Chanyeol reaches for the tissues on the bedstand and helps her wipe her face and blow her nose.

“Don’t tell my parents I told you,” she says, voice wavering with the aftermath of the crying fit. “I’m not allowed to talk about my wrong thoughts.”

Chanyeol feels anger mix in and churn around with his sadness. The word _wrong_ , the feeling that she is somehow wrong for being the person she is - it’s something he knows the pain of so intimately.

“Are you sure, Daehyun? This is really upsetting you, and sometimes grown-ups can talk about things more easily than kids can,” he tries. He’d do anything to help this poor little girl, and he wants to try and get her parents to understand that the way they’re suppressing her is driving her to want to end her life, but Daehyun shakes her head wildly.

“No, no, you mustn’t tell them,” she repeats anxiously, trying to clench her fists, then wincing as the motion pulls on her injured wrists. Chanyeol quickly catches her hands to stop her from hurting herself.

“It’s okay. I promise I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to,” he says, and she looks relieved. She goes back to her notebook, running her fingers over the carefully written words of her name, and Chanyeol has to fight his emotions down all over again.

When he’s sure he’s under control, he asks, “Want to play something?”

Chanyeol is used to dealing with slightly younger children. They do get tweens and sometimes teenagers admitted to the paediatric ward, but Chanyeol has most of his days with the younger ones. But who doesn’t like to play, he reasons. He still likes to play, so surely an 11-year-old will as well. Daehyun bites her lower lip, then nods. 

“Can we play the fortune-telling game?” she asks and Chanyeol agrees enthusiastically. She tears paper out of her notebook and folds it over to make a fortune-teller origami, her motions neat and precise. They take turns to write silly fortunes on the slots and play the game several times. They’re giggling over Chanyeol’s fortune of marrying an alien and moving to live in outer space when his pager beeps and asks for his presence in room 619, where a child is in respiratory distress.

“Sorry, Daehyun. I have to go look after another kid now, but I’ll come back to check on your bandages soon,” he tells her. He waves at her through the window as he leaves and is happy to get a smile and a wave back. 

Chanyeol is busier than he wants to be after the child with respiratory distress. He’d like to go back to Daehyun, but another child is admitted with heart murmur, and then one of their more regular patients comes in with an asthma attack. It has been a couple of hours when he finally returns to room 614. This time Daehyun isn’t alone. She’s staring down at her blanket and the notebook has vanished. An adult woman sits in the chair Chanyeol used earlier and a man stands at the end of the bed. Both adults turn towards Chanyeol when he enters.

“I’m Dr. Park Chanyeol,” Chanyeol introduces himself. “I’ve been in charge of your child's care.” That’s a white lie, because Chanyeol didn’t meet Daehyun until today, but her parents don’t have to know. They have most likely only spoken with the emergency department physician who admitted her. 

“When can we take him home?” Daehyun’s father asks. Daehyun sinks even further into the bed and draws the blanket up over her face. Chanyeol desperately wants to correct the misgendering, but he can’t out Daehyun when she doesn’t want him to. 

“I’ll have to check the wounds and make sure everything is alright. Would you mind stepping out for a moment?” Chanyeol puts on his most charming smile. The mother looks ready to agree, but the father shakes his head. 

“We'll stay, Dr. Park,” he says. Chanyeol's heart sinks. He'd wanted to talk to Daehyun alone again. He walks towards the bed and gently pats the blanket. Daehyun lowers it enough to peek over. Chanyeol sends her a soft smile, but gets no response, and when he asks for her wrists, she mindlessly hands them over. The glimpse of a happy little girl Chanyeol found before has gone, and there is nothing but hopelessness in her eyes.

Chanyeol has never hoped for a child’s injury to not heal well before, but today he does. He wants an excuse to keep Daehyun here and away from the parents who are suffocating the life out of her. But the wounds are healing well, the stitches look good and there’s no signs of infection. It’ll take weeks before they have healed completely, but he can't keep her admitted to the paediatric ward any longer. He wishes he could transfer her to the child psychiatric unit, but her parents have the power to decide and they have chosen to take her to their own psychologist. He wonders darkly what kind of psychologist this is. He’s heard things from Yeonseok about 'conversion therapy' that appall him. Chanyeol never had to deal with that, because he’s been hiding, but braver children sometimes suffer worse. 

He tries to sound positive as he tells Daehyun and her parents that she can be discharged, avoiding use of Daehyun's birth name and gendered language as best he can, for Daehyun's sake. “You should schedule an appointment two weeks from now to get the stitches removed,” he explains. “We can do that here in our outpatient clinic.” He hopes they’ll schedule their appointment here so he can see Daehyun again, but there’s nothing that prevents her parents from taking her to their GP to get the stitches removed, and that will be the end of it. Chanyeol will never see Daehyun again and he’ll never know what will happen to her. 

His heart feels heavy and burdened as he leaves her alone with her parents. He's checking a file behind the nurses station when he sees Daehyun trailing along behind her parents to the reception to be discharged. She looks so unhappy, and Chanyeol feels his heart constrict. He feels so helpless. It's almost worse than seeing a child with a physical illness, because he can't intervene on a medical basis, her parents have the right to get her privately treated, and the law does not recognize misgendering children as child abuse. There is literally nothing he can do for her.

As he watches them leave, his own fear rises, and he feels his hands get clammy. That could have been him. If he had told his parents about his preferences at the age of 13, he could have been met with the same disappointment, the same disregard, and Chanyeol doesn't know if he'd have been able to cope with that kind of rejection either, back then, so young and alone. Even now, when he has Yeonseok, and his big sister and Jongdae having accepted him wholeheartedly, he isn't sure if he could handle it. His heart speeds up as the familiar fear runs cold down his spine. He closes his eyes, only to find himself imagining the response he’d get, his mother crying, his father swearing. Their disappointment and rage as they reject and disown him.

He’s only shocked out of his fear when Nurse Yun snaps his fingers in front of his face. He asks him to attend to a patient they suspect suffers from compensated shock before it turns worse, and Chanyeol goes to do so, feeling more hopeless about society ever accepting people like him and Daehyun than he's felt in years.

\---

By the time Chanyeol gets off work, he feels drained. The last hours of his shift have been busy, but he can’t get Daehyun out of his mind. Everywhere he turns, he sees her and the hopeless look in her eyes. He says goodbye to the day staff and greets the evening staff and still his steps feel heavy as he walks towards the elevator that will take him down to the ground floor. He wonders if she’ll be back again in a month or two in another suicide attempt. He wonders if her parents will continue to force her to stay the son they had when she was born. He wonders if she’ll ever be able to show the world who she really is or if the name will stay on a piece of paper, repeated over and over to convince herself that is really who she is.

It takes 10 minutes to walk to the offsite parking and locate his car in the grey January evening. The car is freezing when he gets inside and he shivers involuntarily. On the dashboard is the small photo of him and Yeonseok, smiling, arms wrapped around each other. He sighs and tries to will the sadness away. The world is cruel, but at least he can hide in his own safe haven with the man he loves. When Yeonseok holds him, everything else falls away, and he's perfect despite all his imperfections.

He drives home to his apartment, gets inside and puts his shoes onto the rack next to Yeonseok’s. Crying Nut are playing on the big stereo in the living room. Chanyeol can see Yeonseok in the kitchen, but there’s no way the other man has heard him come in over the music. He watches as his boyfriend sings along to the chorus of Speed Up Losers and a smile touches his lips.

He walks into the kitchen and announces his presence over the music. Yeonseok turns around with a wide smile.

“You’re home late,” he says. He stretches up to kiss Chanyeol quickly before getting the remote control and turning down the music. "How was your day?"

Chanyeol shrugs and steals a piece of kimchi with his fingers. “What are we having for dinner?” he asks, hoping to avoid answering the question.

He should be so lucky. Yeonseok _looks_ at him. 

"Okay, so it was a bad day.” He reaches for Chanyeol’s hand and pulls him away from the kitchen counter. They walk into the living room and Yeonseok pushes Chanyeol down onto the couch, then sits next to him. "Spill." 

Chanyeol half-smiles through his sadness. He should have known Yeonseok wouldn't let him get away with it.

“I had a patient today, eleven years old. She's transgender. She told me her parents don’t believe who she really is, and she wouldn’t let me talk to them about it because she’s been scolded for having “wrong thoughts”.”

Yeonseok intertwines their fingers and lets a finger gently caress Chanyeol’s. 

“Why was she in hospital?”

Chanyeol sighs. "Suicide attempt. She'd tried to cut her radial arteries.” He shifts around on the couch so he can look at Yeonseok more directly. “This society fails so many people who don’t fit the traditional family pattern. It’s so unfair. She's only eleven and doesn’t want to live anymore because she's been told repeatedly that she's wrong for being who she is. I mean, society tells us we’re wrong all the time and we at least feel like the gender we were born into. She's felt out of place in her own body for as long as she can even remember. How much worse would it be for her?”

Chanyeol doesn’t realise he’s getting wrought up until Yeonseok grabs his shoulder and forces him to look into his eyes.

“We can only change the world one person at a time," Yeonseok reminds him. "Your patient met someone who accepted her for who she is when she met you. You made a difference in her life just by accepting and understanding that who she is isn’t wrong. You are not wrong either. We are not wrong.”

Chanyeol sighs and closes his eyes briefly. “I know,” he whispers, but his words have no conviction in them. It's sometimes so hard to believe it, when almost everything he sees and hears tells him the exact opposite.

“Hey, Chanyeol. Look at me." Chanyeol opens his eyes and looks straight into the smaller man's. "You are not wrong, Chanyeol. We are not wrong,” Yeonseok repeats, strong and sure, as he is about everything.

“We are not wrong,” he echoes, and Yeonseok nods. The words linger in the living room. Yeonseok leans over to kiss his lips and Chanyeol closes his eyes again, relaxing into the warmth of his boyfriend's arms.

They are not wrong.


	15. January 24th

“Negative,” Songmi says as she walks into the kitchen.

Yixing's heart sinks. He struggles not to show his reaction, but he knows he's failed when Songmi comes over and sits down on his lap at the kitchen table. She gently removes a piece of stray hair so she can look him in the eyes, and he puts a hand on her hip to hold her in place.

“Don’t be sad, honey. We’ll get there. It’s only been a couple of months.” She presses a kiss to his forehead.

He knows she’s right. He has read up on every article about pregnancy he can find and he knows it can take some time for the body to go back to normal after years on birth control. Even so, it’s disappointing every time the pregnancy test comes back negative. Songmi doesn’t seem to mind the negative tests too much. It doesn’t seem to burn her out the way it does Yixing.

“What are you doing today?” she asks. Yixing nuzzles into her hair, and she writhes a little at the tickle.

“Outpatients,” he tells her, reaching around her for his coffee. They’re still in their pajamas and it’s only 6:30 in the morning. Outside, the January morning is cold and dark, and the street lights cast their shadows on the buildings around them. Songmi pulls the plate of toast closer and picks up a slice.

“Oh, great. I get off at 5 today too, so we can drive home together.”

Yixing nods and pulls her a little closer in his lap. She starts eating and Yixing watches with coffee in hand. She’s beautiful even in her pajamas, so carefree and confident. She munches happily away and once again, Yixing is struck by how much he loves her, and what a great mother she’ll be. When it’s been a minute and he still hasn’t taken a sip of his coffee, she raises an eyebrow at him.

“Eat your breakfast, or your outpatients are going to suffer with a cranky oncologist.”

Yixing promptly bounces his knee, making her jump in her seat on his lap.

“Behave, young lady,” he tells her. Songmi sticks out her tongue and continues eating. She’s right, though. He tends to get hungry around 10 if he doesn’t eat and he would like to last through to lunch. They eat in silence until Songmi suddenly notices it’s getting late and she isn’t nearly done getting ready yet. Yixing slowly chews his toast and watches his wife as she hurries through the apartment, putting on her make-up and styling her hair.

They usually take the bus, but it’s too cold and the car is both more comfortable and more reliable in this weather, so Yixing is driving them both to work today. As he pulls onto the road, Songmi looks across at him.

“Remember I’m going with my sister to her check-up during lunch, so you’re on your own,” she says.

Yixing nods. “Yep, I know.”

She smiles at him and reaches over to pat his hand. “And remember to call your mother and wish her a happy birthday today.”

“Okay, baby,” he says, but Songmi still isn’t finished.

“My parents want to invite us out for dinner this weekend, so please check your schedule and if possible, don’t be on call on Saturday.”

Yixing stops responding as Songmi continues to remind him of every little thing he has to do this upcoming week. It’s unlike her but it’s silly in a cute way, so he doesn’t mind. In fact, some of the things she’s telling him to remember are definitely things he would've forgotten.

“Are you sure the test was negative?” he jokes when she finally runs out of things to remind him about. She snorts.

“Oh come on, I’m not that bad.” Yixing just whistles an innocent tune, and she smacks his arm lightly before getting distracted by messages arriving on her phone.

The oncology ward is quiet when Yixing arrives. The receptionist, Jinsang, scrolls intently through files on his computer, making sure every time slot is filled and that the papers needed for every consultation are in order. He’s wearing a headset and doesn’t notice Yixing smiling at him when he comes in. Yixing shrugs internally and goes into his office, where he sheds his jacket and hangs it behind the door. He has just shrugged his white coat over his shoulders when Jinsang pops his head in with an apologetic smile.

“I had to make a few last minute changes to your schedule.” He hands Yixing a piece of paper that has a few patients crossed out and a few others added in neat handwriting. Yixing starts reading the names of his first few patients. There are a few names on the list that he recognizes and the first one draws a sigh from his lips. He takes a deep breath before leaving his office, list in hand. As he passes Jinsang in reception, he sees the other man already greeting a few of the outpatients he will consult today.

His first consultation is with a certain Mr. Lee, and to his dismay, the man has brought his wife with him. The fighting couple left quite the impression on the entire ward a couple of months earlier. Mr. Lee has recovered well from his surgery and his CT scans don’t show any remission. He shoots a triumphant look at his wife, which falls from his face when Yixing asks how quitting smoking is going. Now it’s Mrs. Lee’s turn to smirk as she tells him that Mr. Lee hasn’t stopped smoking even one bit and is going to die from cancer, she’s sure. Yixing shrinks inwardly as Mr. Lee raises his voice in angry retort. He we go again, he thinks, wishing he could just cover his ears like a child. Instead he pretends to be doing something important on the computer, hoping they’ll stop on their own this time.

Five minutes of shouting argument later he reaches breaking point. He hates yelling so much, whether it's from others or from himself, but he has no choice. He raises his voice to cut through the noise, interrupting Mrs. Lee mid-sentence. Maybe it’s rude, but it’s rude of them to fight in front him too.

“There’s not much more to discuss,” he says loudly, “apart from that I’d like you to keep trying to quit smoking, Mr. Lee. It will greatly benefit your recovery and future health.” He doesn’t pause long enough to let them get another word in, informing Mr. Lee once again of the smoking cessation programmes available and moving on to explain the next course of action - another CT scan in three months and then an appointment to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned. They finally leave his office, already starting to bicker again. Yixing feels shaken, and it takes a couple of minutes of sitting with his eyes closed before he feels ready to call his next patient.

Thankfully, the next couple of patients are not so distressing. A 67-year-old woman with lung cancer is happy to hear she's in remission and an 88-year-old man takes his newly diagnosed prostate cancer with immense calm. He doesn’t want treatment. You have to die of something one day, he tells Yixing serenely, and he’s had a good life. Yixing watches him leave and feels a little soothed. Being naturally empathetic is especially hard when you're a cancer doctor. It's nice to get a chance to identify with peace instead of anger and sorrow.

His 11 o’clock appointment is a 32-year-old woman with a tumour in her ovary. They found the mass a week after labor when she suddenly experienced strong abdominal pains, and Yixing now has to break the biopsy results to her. She enters the outpatient clinic with a pram and her husband by her side. Yixing’s heart sinks as he watches her from across the waiting room. The new mother doesn’t outwardly seem distressed, but the whole scenario is just awful. If Yixing can’t treat her cancer, the tiny human in the pram will grow up without a mother. The thought alone makes Yixing’s heart constrict.

“Mrs. Oh?” he calls, and greets her and her husband when they stand up. She smiles at him and the baby in the pram fusses in its sleep. Inside his office, Yixing asks them to sit down and gently leans over to look at the baby.

“What a beautiful child," he says, glancing up to smile at his mother. "Boy or girl?”

Oh Eunji glows like only new mothers can.

“Boy,” she says. “His name is Seunggi. He is beautiful, isn't he?”

She reaches over to link fingers with her husband, and Yixing is surprised to find Songmi flashing into his mind. He doesn’t usually think of her when he’s working, not unless it’s something really out of the ordinary, but something about Oh Eunji’s situation is rattling him. Maybe it’s because it’s the first time Yixing has had a new mother for a patient since he and Songmi have started trying to become pregnant. He finds himself picturing himself in Mr. Oh's place, a brand new father, waiting to hear if his wife has cancer. Of course, statistically, he knows it's extremely unlikely he would ever be in this position. His perspective is skewed because he meets so many people with cancer. But it does happen. Someone has to be those statistics. Yixing knows it better than most.

He pushes the unhelpful thoughts aside and focuses on Eunji. He always tries to break cancer diagnoses slowly. He’s learned that people can’t process too much bad news at once. They stop hearing what he says. At least Eunji is already a little prepared. She’s had CT scans and a biopsy, and she's seeing an oncologist about them. She knows the tests might show a problem.

“We found a mass on your ovary last week when you went for the CT scan, and they took a biopsy for testing." He pauses, and Eunji nods, so Yixing continues. “The biopsy confirmed that the mass appears to be a malignant tumour.”

The glow Eunji had earlier when he asked about her son fades, and the couple's linked hands tighten. Yixing forces himself to go on. “You went for a PET-CT scan afterwards. This showed that the malignancy has spread to your lymph nodes and that there is another mass in your liver.” With each pronouncement, Eunji and her husband cling more desperately to each other. Yixing can see how much pain his words are causing, can feel it, but he has no choice but to keep on hurting them. “I’d like to get a biopsy of the liver mass as well, but I’m afraid it’s very likely that it’s a metastasis from the ovarian malignancy, like the lymph nodes.”

The couple in front of him sit in stunned silence. Eventually Mr. Oh says quietly, “What does all this mean?”

Although he doesn’t articulate the question in this way, Yixing knows that what he really means is _Is my wife going to die?_ And though Yixing would never articulate his response this way, the answer is _Probably_.

“It means Eunji is very sick,” he says gently. “It means she is going to need a lot of help and a lot of treatment.”

“So...it is cancer?” Eunji asks. She already knows the answer, but the question is her last hope, and Yixing is the one who has to crush it.

“Yes, Eunji.” He finds himself using her first name. “It is cancer.”

The silence in the room is so thick it’s almost hard to breathe. It’s Eunji’s husband who breaks it, after what feels like hours.

“What’s the prognosis?”

Yixing absolutely hates that question. He knows the statistics, but most of them are so depressing and he doesn’t want to give them a bleaker outlook. He also can’t lie and reassure them that it's all going to be okay. It really isn't going to be okay, and that is a reality they’ll have to accept.

"I mentioned that we have lymphatic spread and liver involvement. When this happens it’s known as stage 4 cancer. I will be honest with you. The statistics aren't the best. Most women diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer have a five-year survival rate of approximately 17%. However, survival rates are often based on studies of large numbers of people, and they can’t predict what will happen in any particular person’s case.” He looks between Eunji and her husband’s shell-shocked faces. “We have some powerful therapies at our disposal and we’ll do everything we can. People can and do survive this. Don’t give up hope.”

Seunggi starts fussing in his pram. Eunji rocks it until he quiets again, but it doesn’t look like she’s actually present. The idea of probably dying within the next five years is too much for her.

“How will you treat it?” Mr. Oh asks.

“We’ll operate to remove the tumour and the surrounding tissue. Afterwards, we'll start with three cycles of chemotherapy to see how the metastases respond. After the first cycle of chemotherapy, we’ll do a control CT scan to see how it’s going. If the tests show liver metastasis, we may use radiotherapy as well.” Yixing watches them both as they process the information. Eunji sits there quietly, blinking into space for a minute or two before she turns her gaze to Yixing. It’s the first time since he confirmed her question about it being cancer that she has really looked at him.

“What about children?” she whispers, almost inaudible. “Will I be able to bear children again?”

“The safest way to ensure we get the entire tumour is to remove the fallopian tubes and the uterus as well, but that will leave you infertile. It is possible to do a procedure called debulking, in which we remove as much of the tumour as possible without removing the reproductive organs and try to take care of the rest with chemotherapy, but this has a much lower success rate. Your strongest bet for survival is the combined surgery that removes all of it.”

Yixing tries hard not to bite his lower lip as Eunji sinks her gaze to the floor. A couple of seconds later, he realises she’s crying, tears silently flowing down her cheeks. Her husband lets go of her hand so he can embrace her. The appointment time is running out, but unlike the Lees, Yixing isn’t in a hurry to send Eunji and her husband on their way.

“I know it’s a big decision to make," he says after another short silence, "but the quicker we start treatment, the better our chances of fighting the cancer are.”

Eunji sniffles and then sits up straight in her seat. Her husband still holds onto her shoulder, pulling her gently closer.

“Do I have to make a decision now?”

Yixing shakes his head. “Take some time tonight to think about it, and call us tomorrow. If you have any more questions, you can call me at any time. Leave me a message if I can’t come to the phone and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” He hands one of his business cards to Mr. Oh.

Baby Seunggi starts crying, and the sound is like paper cuts in Yixing’s heart. Eunji lifts him out of the pram and calms him down. When she puts him back in the pram, they both stand up. Yixing gets up too.

“We’ll do our very best, I promise,” he tells them as Mr. Oh shakes his hand. The man doesn't respond verbally. He looks like his whole world has just come crashing down around him, and Yixing knows that it has.

When they're gone, Yixing sits back down, lets out a slow breath, and updates Oh Eunji's patient journal before pulling up the files for his next client. The calm he got from the serene elderly man has been replaced by a sense of bleak depression that he knows from experience will not be easy to shake. He passes a hand over his face. Sometimes he really wonders if he's in the right profession. The way he continually goes up and down with his patients is truly exhausting. But there are so many people he can and does help. Is it selfish of him to wish just for his own sake that he'd gone into research instead, or even studied something else entirely, when he's saving people too?

Yixing isn't sure.

Lunchtime has him entering the cafeteria feeling just as low. He knows he needs company, it's not good for him to be alone when he gets like this, but as Songmi reminded him this morning, she’s gone with her sister for her check-up and isn’t here. Standing in line, he looks around the tables in hope of finding someone he can sit with. After a moment he spots a young doctor he recognizes sitting alone on the other side of the room - the friendly ob-gyn he met at Kyungsoo’s birthday, Kim Jongdae. When Yixing has paid for his sandwich he heads towards him. He’s intending to ask if Jongdae minds company, but the smaller man looks up at his approach and gives him a welcoming smile before Yixing can even form the question.

“Oh hey, Yixing! Sit down." He gestures to the empty chair opposite. Yixing obeys, and the heavy sigh he’s been holding back all morning escapes him as he puts his sandwich in front of him. Jongdae smiles, but his eyes already show concern. “Wow, you nearly blew me away with that one. You okay?”

Yixing nods and manages to smile just enough that the dimple comes to his cheek. Him getting stupidly attached to his patients isn’t something he wants to burden the other doctor with, and he doesn't want to talk about it anyway. He wants to forget how he feels and think about something else. He takes a bite of his sandwich while he tries to think of a topic.

“You have kids, right?” he asks when he’s done chewing. He remembers Jongdae and the ED chief getting talkative about their kids during Kyungsoo’s birthday dinner. Jongdae smiles again, lighting up at the mention of his children.

“Yeah, three, aged 6, 4 and 15 months. You don’t, right?”

Yixing feels unusually shy as he shakes his head no. “Not yet,” he says. Jongdae’s eyes go wide.

“Oh, really? When’s the due date?” Yixing only feels more embarrassed when he realises how his answer is being interpreted. He waves his hand.

“Songmi isn’t pregnant yet, but we’ve started actively trying. No luck yet though.” He hesitates for a few beats before asking, “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”

Jongdae nods immediately. “Sure, go for it.”

“How did you learn your wife was pregnant with your first?”

Jongdae's eyes go distant as he recalls what is obviously a happy memory.

“Ahreum told me when she missed her period and I was there when she took the test. We weren’t planning it, but when it happened, I knew it was right. So did she,” Jongdae says. “So we got married. People thought we were too young, but we’ve never regretted it for a moment. I don’t know what I’d do without them now.” He’s smiling so fondly as he speaks of his family. Yixing wants to know that feeling. He sighs again, and then gives an embarrassed laugh when the sound causes Jongdae to look at him quizzically.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s silly to be so hung up on it when we’ve only been trying for a couple of months.”

Jongdae gives him an understanding look. “You’ll get there,” he says. “It often takes six months to a year for couples to get pregnant. It’ll happen.” Yixing nods, remembering that Jongdae is an ob-gyn and certainly has knowledge in this matter. He doesn’t get to thank him before the other doctor is paged to the emergency department and has to go.

Six months to a year, Yixing sighs to himself. He will have to have patience.

\---

Joonmyun has stopped counting how long it has been since he slept. The number of hours would probably alarm him if he allowed himself to think about it, but he can’t help it. Being a cardiothoracic surgeon in constant demand at the hospital, he’s used to getting by on less sleep than most people, but now that he has a new baby, things are different.

It’s not that Yejoon is a crier. No, he’s actually a remarkably good baby, at least if the library of parenting books Joonmyun has read are anything to go by. He does cry when he’s hungry, but settles easily once fed, and sleeps like a lamb. He and Yejin had originally decided to alternate getting up for him - Joonmyun uses breast milk in a bottle Yejin expresses with a pump during the day for this purpose - but as it happens, “getting up” isn’t really necessary when Joonmyun never goes to bed in the first place.

He sits in the rocking chair beside Yejoon’s cot. Yejin is sleeping soundly in the double bed, an eye-mask over her eyes preventing the warm amber glow of the moon-shaped night light plugged into the socket from disturbing her sleep. Joonmyun is supposed to be in bed and asleep too, but lately, watching Yejoon is more restful for him than lying in bed. When he doesn’t have eyes on his baby son, or at least know that Yejin has hers on him, he finds his heart beginning to pound, anxiety building in his chest and tightening his throat, making it impossible to sleep. Thoughts rush around in his head like runaway trains, threatening to derail him at any second. He knows his fear is illogical. Yejoon is as healthy as an infant can be, despite coming into the world three and a half weeks early. His cot is not too soft or cluttered with toys that could suffocate him, neither of them smoke, the house is warm and dry, and they always put him down to sleep on his back. There is no reason to fear that Yejoon will succumb to the thing that terrifies Joonmyun the most, but fear won’t listen to reason, and since it will not let him sleep, Joonmyun finds the most relaxing thing is to simply sit by the side of the cot and watch his baby breathe.

Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is what he fears. It's rare, especially these days when parents are taught how to keep a sleeping baby safe, but sometimes, young babies just die. No rhyme or reason, no known cause of death, no heart condition, no genetic abnormality. They simply stop breathing, and their parents wake up to find a dead child in place of the living one they put down the night before. The thought of this fills Joonmyun with dread such as he’s never experienced before. Yes, he thinks, blinking eyes so dry with lack of sleep they feel gritty. The best thing is to sit here and watch his baby breathe. The anxiety leaves him alone when he watches Yejoon. It is the only thing that will bring him peace, because he knows that if Yejoon does happen to stop breathing, Joonmyun will be able to revive him. He is a surgeon. He will not let anything bad happen to his child.

Yejin finds him there when Yejoon wakes at 12 minutes past 6, hungry for his morning feed. She pushes her eye mask up onto her forehead as Joonmyun leans forward in the rocking chair and lifts their grizzling son out of the cot.

“Your turn, love,” he says, bringing Yejoon over to the bed. “I used the last of the expressed milk at two this morning.”

He passes Yejoon to her, and she gives him a quick smile before settling the baby to her breast. Joonmyun sits on the bed beside her and puts an arm around her shoulders, leaning back against the headboard. Tiredness washes over him like a wave, so powerful he goes dizzy with it.

“Did you watch him all night again?”

He forces his eyes open at Yejin’s voice. She sounds worried. He doesn’t like to hear that in her voice. She’s the one who is always calm, balancing his nerves with her placid, laid-back nature. He needs her calmness.

“Yes,” he admits. There’s no point in denying it. He was in the chair when she fell asleep and he was there this morning. His side of the bed is undisturbed. The question is not really a question. He smiles at her, trying to allay the concern he reads in her dark eyes. “I wasn’t really tired anyway. I think it’s more relaxing to watch him sleep than to actually sleep.”

“I don’t think that theory would hold up under clinical trial, darling.” He hears the teasing note in her voice, but the worry hasn’t left her face. She leans into his shoulder, resettling Yejoon when he wriggles. “You didn’t sleep last night either, and the night before you didn’t get more than three hours when you slept instead of having dinner and I was watching him.”

Put like that, it does sound a little...odd. Joonmyun tries not to squirm like a child caught doing something they know they shouldn't. “I can nap at work,” he says. “I often do, in fact. The couch in my office is great.”

“But why? Why sleep there, and not here? Why do you need to watch him so much?”

Joonmyun is silent. He doesn’t want to put his fears into words. It’s all so irrational, so illogical. He knows it is. Saying it aloud would make him sound crazy. He knows Yejoon is not going to die of SIDS, or of anything else, but a deep, long-suppressed part of him is afraid that if he speaks his fears aloud he will give them power. He'll bring it into reality, and Yejoon will die, and it will be Joonmyun’s fault because he knew it was going to happen and he didn't stop it, didn't do anything to even try and stop it...

“Joonmyun?"

He blinks. "Hm?"

"Love, you can’t go on like this. You look wrecked. Your health will suffer, and what about your patients? How can they trust a surgeon who’s had less than three hours’ sleep in three days?”

There, she has a point. Joonmyun has to admit that. He is skilled, and he can focus when he needs to, but willpower can only get a person so far. Eventually, inevitably, he will reach breaking point.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but when I’m not watching him, or know that you are watching him, I get so anxious. It’s not that I’m refusing to sleep. It’s just not possible to sleep when I feel like that. The only thing that works is watching him.” He strokes the back of one finger down Yejoon’s black hair, soft as fairy down.

“You know he’s safe,” Yejin says gently. “You know he’s healthy.”

“Yes,” Joonmyun agrees. “Yes. I do know.”

“I’ll watch him now,” Yejin says. “Will you sleep a little now? For me?”

Joonmyun glances at the bedside clock. “I don't have time now. I’ve got a packed surgical schedule today. A baby with a heart defect this morning, and a run of bypasses after. I better get going.”

He starts to get up off the bed again, and finds that he is still wearing yesterday’s shirt and pants. For a second he is actually shocked. He was sure he intended to at least put his pyjamas on last night. No wonder Yejin knew he hadn’t gone to bed. She doesn’t mention it when he grabs fresh clothes and heads for the shower, but when he’s back, damp-haired and smelling of the grapefruit and clove aftershave her sister gave him for Christmas, she pulls him down for a quick kiss.

“Sweetheart, I think we need to do something about your anxiety before it gets out of control,” she says. Her voice is dead serious. “Think about it today. We’ll talk more tonight.”

Joonmyun's stomach seems to sink downwards at her words. Yejin does not overreact, and she would not make suggestions like this lightly. If she thinks his anxiety is getting out of hand, then she is probably right.

He promises he will think about it, but he has to put it out of his mind when he gets to work. Paperwork has piled up in his office because he’s taken to catching half an hour’s sleep on the couch rather than deal with it, and he can barely see his desk under the mess. The department secretary complains to him about the paperwork, and he gives her his most charming smile as he rushes away again to meet the residents who were on the ward overnight, then off to his surgical schedule.

The baby with the atrial septal defect goes smoothly, and he reassures the anxious parents afterwards with calmness Yejin would be proud of. Why is it, he thinks vaguely, that he can be so very calm in theatre and when handling other people’s anxieties, but when it comes to his own, he turns into an illogical, trembling wreck? It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t change how he feels. He heads back to his office, guiltily intending to yet again skip paperwork in favour of forty winks because his eyes feel like lead weights and he is starting to fear that he’ll fall asleep standing up over a patient’s open chest, but stops in his tracks when he passes the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the big cardiology workroom. A group of residents and interns are clustering around the large table that occupies the centre of the room. Joonmyun hesitates for a second, but exhaustion trumps curiosity. He starts to walk on towards his office, but Kijoon sees him through the glass wall and hails him with an excited wave. He rushes over to the door, white coat flapping around him.

“Joonmyun, you have to come see this!” he says enthusiastically. All the residents are on first-name terms with him when not in a professional situation like doing ward rounds or in theatre. Joonmyun insists on it because it’s important to him that the juniors feel comfortable enough to come to him with any problem they might have, whether work-related or personal. Kijoon doesn’t look like he’s having any problems though. He’s grinning as he grabs Joonmyun’s wrist and pulls him into the workspace.

“Here he is,” he announces to the gathered doctors. Everyone looks up at him, five or six residents, a couple of interns and a couple of med students. He lets Kijoon tug him over to whatever it is they’re all standing around. A couple of them step aside so that he can see the object on the table. It’s a large packing box, big enough that a person would need both arms to carry it, covered with international shipping stickers and bearing the logo of a prestigious American university. Curiosity truly ignited now, Joonmyun looks closer at the shipping labels and finally understands why everyone is looking at him with such interest. The package is addressed, in thick black English letters, to Joonmyun Kim, M.D.

“What is it?” the 2nd year resident, Im Sera, asks him.

“I don’t know,” Joonmyun says. He’s completely mystified. He’s sure he’s never been in contact with anyone at an American university. He certainly didn’t order anything from them.

“Well, open it!” Kijoon shoves a box cutter at him impatiently. Joonmyun takes it and slits the box open. Whatever is inside is well-protected by hard, contoured styrofoam packaging. On top of the packaging is a letter, again with his name written on it in English, and a thin glossy brochure. He picks up the brochure and his eyes widen as he scans the words and accompanying picture.

“It’s a CentriMag pump,” he says. A spark of excitement courses through him, chasing his fatigue away. The residents murmur to each other, and Joonmyun feels like Christmas has come all over again. A pretty costly gift for Santa to bring, though - CentriMag pumps are in the region of 10 million won, and the hospital doesn’t own any, relying on the older, lower tech but still trustworthy set of ventricular assist devices they’ve used for cardiopulmonary bypasses for the last fifteen years. He passes the glossy brochure into Sera’s eager hands and picks up the letter and opens it. It’s typed in English on thick letterhead paper, and Joonmyun translates into Korean as he reads it aloud.

_Dear Dr. Kim,_

_We in the Department of Biomedical Engineering were fascinated and impressed to hear of your case from last October regarding your successful removal of a two-meter metal rebar transfixing pleura and heart. Our engineering team has been refining the latest developments to the CentriMag ventricular pump device, and we are delighted to offer you and your team at Hangang University Hospital our newly approved prototype, the CentriMag C-20. The blood propulsion mechanism spins within a magnetic field and can pump up to 10 liters of blood per minute, a great improvement on older devices. Further specifications can be found in the accompanying brochure. Feedback from you or your team on the usability and clinical efficacy of the device would be greatly welcomed._

_Our congratulations on your success and we wish you all the best with your future endeavors in the field of cardiothoracic surgery._

The letter is signed by the professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at the university, followed by a list of the names of the development team. Joonmyun puts the letter down, rather stunned, as the other staff congratulate him on being recognized by a top university. He lets Kijoon and Sera unpack the box so that everyone can see the gleaming cylindrical pump with its tubing and the electronic console that will control it. He has no idea how news of his case travelled all the way to an American university. Among the hospital staff, Joonmyun has received more attention for the embarrassing video of the prank Dr. Oh and Dr. Byun played on him and then uploaded to the staff intranet than for the dramatic surgery he performed the same day. He hasn’t even submitted a paper on the case to a journal yet, despite urges from the chief of department to do so. Perhaps it just went through the medical grapevine.

As his surprise calms, he finds himself smiling, watching the junior doctors carefully pass the still-wrapped pump around and look at the brochure to see how it works. He never intended to be a hero that day. He was just doing his job, as he always does. No matter who the patient or how interesting or mundane the case, Joonmyun will always do his best for them. But he can’t help but feel proud to have received international attention, and even better is the fact that his department is now in possession of the very latest groundbreaking medical technology. With this new pump, they’ll be able to oxygenate blood far more efficiently and safely than with the older devices. Joonmyun saved one person that day, but this pump will help them save hundreds more.

A couple of the residents leave to make rounds and the buzz of interest dies down. Joonmyun gives up on his forty winks and sits down to look at the specs more closely. He’s only been reading for a couple of minutes when his phone rings. A glance at the screen shows him it’s the obstetrician on call, and when he answers, a familiar light-toned voice speaks in his ear.

“Joonmyun?”

“Hey, Jongdae. What’s up?” Joonmyun asks. He’s unsure what this call is about. He’s not on call today, but if it was a personal call Jongdae would surely have used his personal phone, not the obstetrics department phone. He’s enlightened by the younger doctor’s next words. Apparently Jongdae can’t get hold of Dr. Chae, and he asks if Joonmyun has time to come and give him a quick cardiology consult in the emergency department. Joonmyun glances at the wall clock and sees he still has twenty minutes before he needs to scrub in for the first bypass surgery.

“I’ll be right down,” he says. This means he probably won’t have time to eat before he’s in theatre again, and he could have passed the case on to one of the residents, but something in Jongdae’s voice concerns him. He’s never known the ob-gyn to be anything but cheerful and confident, but Joonmyun thinks he hears uncertainty in his friend’s voice. “What’s the case?” he asks as he starts to walk towards the elevators.

“It’s probably nothing,” Jongdae starts hesitantly, and now Joonmyun is sure something is wrong. He frowns as Jongdae describes a simple case of hypertension in a pregnant patient. From what he’s hearing, there’s no reason to call in a heart specialist. It sounds to him like a lack of confidence in the diagnosis. From a med student or intern he might expect this, but not from Jongdae. He is experienced, and is one of the swiftest and most skilled obstetric surgeons they have. There’s no reason for him to be insecure.

He arrives in the ED and finds his way to the distant exam room where Jongdae is waiting with the patient, her husband, and three children ranging from a young teenager to a toddler. Jongdae appears calm as he introduces Joonmyun as the consulting heart specialist, but he is paler than usual, and Joonmyun sees a tightness in his eyes, a tension in his neck and jaw. It isn't normal for Jongdae, and Joonmyun knows the feelings of anxiety well enough to know what he is seeing. Jongdae is trying very hard not to freak out right now.

He examines the pregnant woman. Her blood pressure is high, but not alarmingly so, and she’s stable. At 38 years old she has higher risks during pregnancy than younger women do, but there are no clinical signs to indicate concern apart from the blood pressure, and the ECG changes are not significant. He’s not really certain why Jongdae has called him down. There’s nothing wrong with this patient. He smiles as he reassures her and her family and provides the standard advice about resting and coming back if she feels any symptoms.

“Sorry to bother you,” Jongdae says humbly as they leave the exam room together. “I know you’re busy.”

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” Joonmyun says, and he means it. He’s always been of the school of ‘better safe than sorry’, and if Jongdae is worried about a hypertensive patient there’s no harm in Joonmyun checking her out. But he doesn’t like the feeling he’s getting from Jongdae. He’s too pale, too tense, and a doctor of his skill should have been confident that the patient was fine. “What had you worried?” he asks. “Were you uncertain of the significance of the ECG changes?”

Jongdae is silent for a beat too long. “I know there were no concerning features,” he says slowly. His head is almost hanging, and for the second time Joonmyun feels like he’s talking to an insecure med student. “I don't know why, but...I was suddenly scared I'd missed something. I don’t want to lose another one.”

“Lose another one?” They’re out of the ED now and in the hall to the elevators, and really Joonmyun should be racing up to cardiology to get scrubbed in because he’s already going to be late, but he stays in step with Jongdae. “You’ve lost a patient recently?”

Jongdae looks so forlorn that Joonmyun has to resist a sudden impulse to hug him. “Three,” he says, his voice so quiet it’s almost a whisper.

Three? Joonmyun is shocked. It’s rare to lose expecting mothers in this day and age. Cardiology patients often die, and Joonmyun has developed coping mechanisms to deal with it, but now he’s pretty sure he knows the reason for Jongdae’s obvious loss of confidence. Losing those three patients must have struck him hard.

Jongdae really looks like he needs a hug. Joonmyun aches to comfort him, but it's not professional. Not here, in the busy wide corridor to the elevators, patients and staff and public members going in all directions. He puts a hand on Jongdae's shoulder instead, stopping him and turning in a bit so that they're facing each other. “I know you, Jongdae,” he says firmly. “You’re an excellent doctor. I know you would have done everything you possibly could.”

Jongdae shakes his head slightly. “I did, but…” he trails off and Joonmyun continues into the gap.

“I trusted you with my wife and child, didn’t I? And you know what I’m like.” He gives his friend a rueful smile. “Paranoid dad of the century, that’s me. If I trust you to look after my family, that means you’re trustworthy.”

At this, Jongdae finds a smile. “Thanks for saying that,” he says. “I’ll try not to bother you with unnecessary cases again - ”

“Hey, no,” Joonmyun interrupts. “You think you need a consult, you can call me anytime. Whether I’m on call or not, I don’t care. I mean it,” he says firmly when Jongdae looks doubtful. “I tell this to all my junior staff - never feel bad for getting a second opinion. I’d always rather see a patient that’s healthy than one that’s too sick.”

Jongdae looks so grateful as he nods and thanks him, and Joonmyun’s heart goes out to him. The poor guy has been really knocked by this. He would really like to sit down with Jongdae and talk this through properly, but he’s already going to be so late for his surgery, and the knock-on effect for the operating suite will get worse the longer he delays. As it happens he doesn’t have to excuse himself, because Jongdae’s beeper goes off just as the elevator door opens, and he spins and starts to jog back towards the emergency department with a quick “see you around” to Joonmyun.

Joonmyun sighs as he leans against the wall of the elevator and waits while it carries him upwards. It’s so easy to provide words of reassurance to others. If only he could believe them when he says them to himself.


	16. February 1st

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter is full of angst and references mental illness and could potentially hold triggers, one of which is attempted suicide.

It's all his fault. Baekhyun is sure now. It's his fault, and what's happening to him is only what he deserves.

This idea, no, this _knowledge_ that it's all his fault didn't come to him straight away. At first he was too shocked and distressed to think much of anything, that awful night, that first, awful week when there was no more Nari and yet Baekhyun somehow had to go on living. After that week, when the initial shock subsided into the heavy darkness that has settled around him like a cloud and refused to lift away, he'd begun trying to work out what had happened. What he'd done to make Nari fall out of love with him. She'd told him it wasn't his fault, that he didn't do anything wrong, but Baekhyun found that hard to understand. If he hadn't done anything wrong, she wouldn't have left him. So there must have been something. Maybe Nari didn't even realise it herself, but something about Baekhyun is wrong enough to make her leave him.

The days, weeks, months had dragged by and every day Baekhyun tried to live without her. He really tried. He went to work. He spoke to people when they spoke to him. He smiled at his patients and wrote clear, concise notes in their journals. He showered and washed his hair and brushed his teeth. He tried to eat enough to keep his body functioning. It will get better, he would think. It has to. If I just keep on going, it will get better.

But it hasn't gotten better.

It's gotten worse.

After Chanyeol found him on the bridge, Baekhyun has been really trying to do better, because he can see Chanyeol worrying about him, and it makes him feel terribly guilty and ashamed. He wants to just disappear, so that he can stop causing trouble and pain to his friend, but he can't disappear, and he can't make Chanyeol forget he ever existed either, no matter how much he wishes that were possible. So he has to do better. If he can't feel better, then he has to at least act better, for Chanyeol's sake.

His new attempt at acting like he's okay works just enough to get him through another two weeks or so. He wears a jacket when he goes outside, avoids the footbridge, allows Chanyeol to collect him at lunchtime every day and force food into him. He makes himself a rule to shower at work every time he finishes a day in the OR, because it's easier to find the energy to shower at work than it is at home, where all he seems to be able to do is sleep.

He forces himself not to give in to the strange urges he's starting to feel. The urge to walk way too slowly. To stop walking completely and turn to face the wall and bang his head rhythmically against it. To crouch down and trace the painted lines on the linoleum corridor floor with his fingers. He can't do that when people are around. If he does they'll see his cracks. They'll know he's all gone wrong inside.

Sometimes he thinks they know anyway. He senses them watching him. He huddles on himself, lowers his head, thinks angrily, stop looking at me! Stop watching! Stop staring! He knows they're not really, but somehow, at the same time, he's sure they are. They're seeing through his mask and into his guilt and shame.

At other times he realises that he's being stupid, of course the other doctors, the nurses, the receptionist and the patients are not watching him. They're getting on with their own lives like people do. Why was he thinking that, earlier? He doesn't understand where his mind was.

A couple more days pass, and Chanyeol is relaxing, because Baekhyun is trying so hard. He's talking to his friend about his patients, even though his recitations of each case must be dreadfully boring compared to the way he used to tell them. He's eating, at least at lunchtime, and his friend doesn't know that half the time Baekhyun ends up throwing up an hour later, because sadness sits like a rock in his stomach and refuses to let him digest. He's going through the motions, and Chanyeol can't see that inside, Baekhyun is drowning.

On Wednesday, Baekhyun is walking across his office to get a file he needs from the shelf across the room when everything suddenly goes dark. He stops dead. He hears a gasp, and thinks it's him. There was a pen in his hand and it falls to his feet with a light plasticky clatter.

He can't see. He's going blind.

He stands like a statue in the middle of his office, terror stretching his eyes wide and making his body stiff, until he realises that he's wrong. He's not going blind, because he can, in fact, see. It isn't dark. There are his framed certificates on the wall, the shelves of books, the computer desk, the window through the door into the busy corridor outside. The bright light in his office is on. His eyes are seeing. He looks down to the pen lying at his feet. He sees it.

But it's dark. Somehow it's dark, he knows it's dark. Everything is dark. He can't see. He can't see.

"I can't see," he hears someone saying, the words flowing into each other like a chant, "I can't see, I can't see, I can'tseeIcan'tseeIcan'tsee -" It's him, his voice, the words coming from his mouth, tangling over themselves, but somehow saying them helps, or no, it's more like he needs to say them, and it doesn't matter anyway because they're coming out on their own and there's a strange comfort in them. His eyes prickle and now there are tears sliding down his face, the words are pulling the tears out like fingers in his eyes, "I can't see I can't see I can't I can't I can't -"

He can't even stand. The floor greets him. Hands and knees. Fingers spread onto thin office carpet. The pen he dropped bumps his fingertips. He can't see. No, he can see. Some part of Baekhyun knows he can. He just thinks he can't, and now he's scared, now he's really scared, because he knows it isn't really dark, and yet somehow at the same time it is dark. He's seeing, but he can't see.

Why can't he see?

"Can't can't can't" the words are blurring. He's losing them. They stop coming, and without them he is lost. He shuts his eyes and fear courses through him, paralysing him.

Could Nari see this darkness around him? Could she sense it, hovering around him, waiting and ready for Baekhyun to break so it could sink into his cracks and consume him? She must have been able to. She must have known. Baekhyun is sure now. She was right to get out of it, get away from him. He is relieved that she got away.

There are things in the darkness, swimming around him. Ugly things, hateful things, things that wish him harm. They're there, even though they're not. They're there for him, because it was his fault. His fault, everything is his fault. Guilt grows teeth and starts tearing him apart inside. He doesn't know what he did but whatever it was, it was bad. He covers his ears and closes his eyes, hunched over and kneeling on the office floor while they swim around him, and he hears a voice again, his voice, the words are back, different this time. "No," he's saying, over and over, "no no no no no no-"

There's a pen in his hand and he takes it and stabs it hard into his leg. Then again, again, again. There's pain, and he focuses on it, the sharp pain where the tip stabs into his thigh and the duller bruising pain because it's only a ballpoint and he has to hit pretty hard to get much pain out of it. But yes, the pain finds him in his lost darkness, and he opens his eyes and he's in an office, his office, and it is not dark, and he can see.

He's chilled and shaking and drained. He kneels on the floor while reality gathers back around him. His leg is throbbing. The plastic sheath of the ballpoint pen has splintered.

Can a person be horrified and numb at the same time? Apparently so, because Baekhyun is. Rationality is back with him. Of course he can see. Of course there aren't monsters swimming in the darkness around him.

He feels like he's just woken up from a nightmare, except the difference is that he knows he was awake. He didn't wake up. It was more like skipping from one reality to another.

There's a brisk knock on his door and it opens before he can say anything. He starts to get to his feet and staggers, head spinning. Whoever it is that opened the door catches his arms and steadies him, and he's looking into Chanyeol's face, eyes wide with alarm, worry etching creases into his forehead.

"Are you alright? Why were you on the floor? You didn't pass out, did you?"

Baekhyun shakes his head quickly. "No, nothing like that," he says. "I - I dropped my pen, I was just picking it up," he holds up the pen as evidence and is grateful that he's wearing dark pants, because he's probably made ink marks all over the fabric that covers the throbbing area of his thigh.

Chanyeol exhales. "Oh, okay," he says, and smiles. Baekhyun can see how relieved he is and the guilt is back, not that it ever really left, but it is back worse and worse. He hates that Chanyeol worries. It's so wrong. He shouldn't worry about Baekhyun. His friend doesn't deserve this kind of stress, and it's all Baekhyun's fault for being so useless and being unable to get his act together.

The things in the darkness swim around him. He feels them brush against his back, his arms. He shudders. No, he thinks, no no no no. I do not feel them. They are not real.

"Ready for lunch?" Chanyeol smiles at him and takes his arm, obviously not going to take no for an answer, just like he hasn't all week, and Baekhyun resigns himself to yet another session of chew, swallow, try not to throw up for an hour, throw up anyway. It's a truly pointless exercise, but refusing Chanyeol would take too much effort, and he's too ashamed to explain.

He acts his way through lunch, smiles at his friend though it feels like lifting lead weights, makes appropriate noises at the stories Chanyeol tells him from the paediatric ward and reciprocates with descriptions of the patients he's seen that morning. He even manages to swallow most of his lunch with Chanyeol only having to remind him to eat twice.

"I'm on a night shift tonight, and then I have three days off," Chanyeol tells him when they're reaching the end of their break time. "I won't be in until Sunday. Promise you'll keep having lunch?"

"Okay," Baekhyun says. The promise is a lie, but he doesn't care. Whatever makes Chanyeol happy. "I have the weekend off, so I guess I'll see you Monday?" This is a calculated sentence, because he knows it sounds like he's showing interest in life, and as he hoped, Chanyeol beams at him and happily suggests that they go out to a nearby cafe on Monday. Baekhyun smiles, agrees, and stops in the bathroom on the way back to plastics to throw up everything he just ate.

Baekhyun doesn't plan what happens next. He doesn't mean to take advantage. It's just that when he gets home that evening, he realises that Chanyeol isn't going to know if he doesn't go to work tomorrow, and he's just so, so tired, and he's scared too, because of what happened in his office. So he texts Chief Seo that he's picked up a stomach bug and can't come in tomorrow. He should feel relieved that he doesn't have to work tomorrow, but he's too tired for that. He needs to sleep. His phone vibrates as he drags himself towards the couch, but he can't be bothered to check it. It'll only be the chief acknowledging him. It's not like she's going to make him come in if he's supposedly puking his guts out.

Baekhyun lies down on the couch and closes his eyes. It's dark because he never turned on the light when he came in, and the blinds are drawn, because he never opened them this morning, or yesterday morning, or last week. He curls up and drags the blanket from the back of the couch over him. Fear and despair claws at his throat.

He wants out. Everything is too hard, too dark, too scary. He's losing his mind and he wants it to stop. He wants to get away, but there's nowhere to go, yet he knows he can't keep on like this. He's not being dramatic. He really, truly cannot go on. He has to get out. He has to. It has to stop. He's crying again, because it hurts. It hurts and there are things coming for him, they're hating him, he hates himself. "No," he hears, "no no no no..." he pours himself into the words and murmurs them over and over into the blanket. He builds them into a wall between him and the terrible outside. "No no no no no..."

Time passes. He's sleeping. No, he's awake. Or is he? The darkness whispers strange things to him, and he clutches the blanket tighter so that he won't feel them brushing against his skin.

He wishes it would stop. He just wants it all to be over. If only he had thrown himself off that bridge. Now it is too late. His body has shut down. He's stuck. He can't move. He can't even get off the couch to get water, despite the dryness of his mouth. Getting somewhere high enough to hurl himself off is so utterly impossible he might as well be wishing to fly to the moon.

He sleeps. Time passes. At one point he hears his phone ringing. He thinks about moving his hand to pick up his phone, which is within arm's reach on the floor beside the couch, but he doesn't manage to actually make his arm move. The phone rings out. It rings again, but this time he doesn't even think about going for it. His ringtone cheerily sings the first verse of Red Flavor and goes mute halfway through the chorus. After that it doesn't ring again. Perhaps it ran out of power. It doesn't matter.

More time passes. Hours, days, he's long since lost track. Sometimes he isn't actually asleep, but he might as well be, because his eyes are closed and his body is still and leaden, and his mind wanders through rifts and valleys of guilt, shame, despair. There's nothing he can do now. His mind has given up on him, and so has his body. They've given up on him, and he's given up on them. He feels how dry his mouth is, and he is aware that his heart feels strange and fluttery and it's getting harder to breathe, but he can't make it matter. All he can do is lie here and drift, slowly but surely, towards his end.

\---

Jongdae is just finishing up with his last outpatient of the morning when his phone vibrates in his pocket. When he’s said goodbye to the expecting mother and checks his phone, he finds a new message in the group chat with Chanyeol and Baekhyun. _Baekhyun and I are going out for lunch_ , Chanyeol asks. _Can you come?_

Jongdae smiles a little as he messages back, happy that he can accept the invitation. The ob-gyn department is understaffed at the moment and Jongdae's been doing too many extra hours, trying to protect the already exhausted residents from burnout. The last two weeks have vanished into a blurred whirl of business and exhaustion, and catching up with his favourite two doctors sounds like the perfect way to recharge his batteries. Even just getting out of the hospital for an hour sounds amazing; he’s been in here for days and it’s starting to feel like nothing outside the hospital actually exists. _Love to_ , he writes.

 _Meet us in plastics in five?_ Chanyeol’s message pops up immediately, and Jongdae sends back a thumbs-up before changing his white coat for his outside jacket and grabbing his wallet. He arrives on the plastic surgery floor at the same time as Chanyeol and the genuine happiness he feels on seeing his friend spills into his smile.

“Hi, stranger,” Chanyeol says, and Jongdae laughs.

“I don’t even want to think about how many hours I’ve pulled this week,” he says as they fall in step and head past the reception area towards Baekhyun’s office.

“You mean last week,” Chanyeol grins at him. “It’s Monday.”

“Already?” Jongdae is only half-joking. He knows it’s Monday because it’s his outpatient clinic day, but working all weekend makes the fact that it’s the beginning of a new week seem rather irrelevant. Chanyeol knocks on the closed door of Baekhyun’s office and opens it without waiting for an answer, but the office is dark and empty.

“That’s odd,” Chanyeol says. “It’s not one of his surgery days. He should be here.”

“You know his schedule?” Jongdae is a little surprised. It’s hard enough to keep track of his own schedule, let alone another doctor’s in a different department. Chanyeol nods, looking distracted. He closes the office door and Jongdae trails behind him as he strides back towards reception. “But in the chat you said you guys were meeting?”

“Yeah, but we made the plan last week,” Chanyeol explains. “I did remind him, but he didn’t check the message. I assumed he was busy with patients, but...” he trails off as they reach reception and turns to the receptionist with a pleasant smile, but Jongdae doesn’t miss the worry in his friend’s eyes. As Chanyeol asks the receptionist if she’s seen Dr. Byun, Jongdae finds himself suddenly uneasy. He doesn’t know why or where the feeling has come from, but he has the sense that something isn’t right.

“Dr. Byun isn’t in today,” the receptionist tells them. “Dr. Park and Dr. Chung are splitting his outpatients.”

“He’s not in?” Chanyeol repeats. “Why not?”

“He’s sick,” the receptionist says as she pulls up a roster on her computer screen. “Stomach flu, is what I heard. It must be pretty bad. Looks like he hasn’t been in since Wednesday.”

Chanyeol goes white. He makes a clumsy grab for Jongdae’s arm as his knees buckle slightly, and Jongdae grabs his upper arms and steadies him. Alarm shoots through him, and his heart starts to pound. What is this reaction?

“What?” he asks urgently, searching his friend’s face. “Chanyeol, what is it?”

Chanyeol’s eyes meet his, and they are like ragged holes of fear. That look chills Jongdae to the bone. He’s never seen his friend look like this, never. Without answering his question, Chanyeol pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps clumsily at the screen. “Pick up, pick up,” he mumbles as he puts the phone to his ear, but Jongdae hears the recorded message as the phone goes straight to voicemail without ringing.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol curses. He’s still white as a sheet, and Jongdae grips his arm harder.

“Chanyeol, tell me what you’re thinking,” he orders. Chanyeol’s hand falls to his side, the phone hanging loosely in his fingers.

“I found him at the rail of the footbridge two weeks ago,” he says. He sounds dazed. “It looked...he looked bad. He said he wasn’t suicidal, he promised me he wasn’t, but he’s been so depressed and I was so afraid…” his eyes go distant and he grips his phone convulsively before continuing. “But he’s been so much better the last couple of weeks, I really thought he was doing better,” his eyes meet Jongdae’s, full of anguish. “Jongdae, was I wrong?”

Chanyeol’s eyes are pleading with him, begging Jongdae to tell Chanyeol that he wasn’t wrong, but Jongdae can’t, because he doesn’t know. He goes cold as Chanyeol’s words sink in. _Depressed? Suicidal?_ He thinks of all the times Baekhyun has acted differently, been distant and standoffish, refused to talk, refused to hang out, told them he’s “fine, just tired”, snapped at them to back off and to leave him alone already. Horror punches a hole in his chest. He knew something was up. Why didn’t he think further? Why didn’t he try harder? Why did he do as Baekhyun asked and back off, hoping he’d be in a better mood next time? Why didn’t he see that behind his mask, his friend was drowning? Chanyeol has seen. He found Baekhyun on...on a _bridge_...

His thoughts stutter over the horrifying image. “You think he’s in danger?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. All his everyday cares and worries have gone suddenly remote. The world around him grinds to a halt, and he’s flooded with a sense of desperate urgency. He needs to know that Baekhyun is okay. Nothing else has meaning. Nothing else matters.

He dials Baekhyun’s number, but like Chanyeol, he gets voicemail straight away. “I’ll try Nari,” he scrolls through his contacts to find her number.

“She’s away for work,” Chanyeol says. He suddenly springs into motion, shaking his initial shock off. “I need to check on him.”

“I’ll come,” Jongdae says, but Chanyeol is already running towards the elevators and probably hasn’t heard him. He calls Nari anyway as he sprints after his friend, catching him just as the elevator doors open. The phone rings several times, then connects.

“Jongdae?” Nari sounds surprised. He’s had her number for years, but he’s never really contacted her on his own. He puts her on speaker so Chanyeol can hear too.

“Nari, sorry to bother you,” he says quickly. “It’s just that Chanyeol and I are a bit worried about Baekhyun. We heard he’s been sick for a few days, and he’s not answering his phone. Is he okay?”

There’s a long silence, and Jongdae is just about to ask her if she heard his question, thinking the line might be bad, when Nari finally speaks. “I really wouldn’t know,” she says. “Why are you asking me?”

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol sounds confused. “Who else would we ask?”

“He didn’t tell you?” the coolness in Nari’s voice recedes, replaced with slight concern.

“Tell us what?”

“We broke up,” Nari says, “back in November. I haven’t seen Baekhyun since.”

Chanyeol looks like he’s been slapped, and Jongdae feels the same shock himself.

“No,” he says, and his own voice rings hollow in his ears. “He didn’t tell us.”

November, he thinks. God, Baekhyun has been hiding this since November? Jongdae knows how completely in love with Nari his friend was. His entire life revolved around Nari. No wonder he’s been struggling. He must feel like his world ended. Where did this breakup come from? What happened? Why didn’t he tell them?

The immediate questions are shoved aside by urgency. Whatever happened in the past, the only thing that matters now is making sure Baekhyun is safe. He prays that it’s nothing, that Baekhyun just has a stomach flu like the receptionist told them and hasn’t charged his phone, but Chanyeol’s white-faced words haunt him, and now they have a reason for that fear to be true. _He said he wasn’t suicidal, but…_

“What’s wrong? Is he really sick?” Nari asks.

“We don’t know. We can’t get hold of him, and we’re worried. He’s been acting strangely for months,” Jongdae tells her as the elevator reaches the ground floor. “He wouldn’t tell us what was wrong, but now I understand.”

Nari whispers a curse. “I knew he’d take it hard,” she says, “but I thought he’d get over it in time.”

“Do you know the code to his apartment?” Jongdae asks. “We’re heading over there now.”

“If he’s not changed it, it’s 0404,” she says, and her voice goes quieter. “My birthday. Do...do you want me to come?”

“Better not,” Jongdae says. If Baekhyun is okay - _please, please be okay_ \- seeing Nari won’t help him, and if, God forbid, he’s not…

“Then will you call me when you find him?” Nari asks, and he promises to do so before hanging up. Chanyeol has gotten ahead again, disappearing down the steps towards the underground parking. Jongdae runs down the steps after him, catching up just as Chanyeol flings the door of his car open. He slides into the passenger seat.

“I got his door code,” he says, “in case -” he breaks off, unwilling to vocalise the fear that Baekhyun may not be able to open the door for them.

“Why didn’t he tell us?” Chanyeol’s words break several minutes of fraught silence. He’s driving fast, weaving around traffic and roaring through amber lights with his foot down, and he doesn’t look away from the road as he speaks. “Breaking up with Nari must have destroyed him. He loved her so much. Why didn’t he say anything? We could have helped if we’d known,” he sounds distraught, and Jongdae knows how he’s feeling. He feels the same, but he doesn’t know the answers to Chanyeol’s questions. Only Baekhyun knows that.

“He’ll be okay,” he says. “He’s probably just sick and forgotten to charge his phone or something. He’ll be okay,” but it’s all too clear that his words are hollow, and heavy silence falls between them again. Jongdae looks at Chanyeol and sees how tense he is, how his fingers clutch the steering wheel so tight that his fingers are white and red in patches, but nothing he can say will help.

Chanyeol parks the car in front of Baekhyun’s apartment building with a screech and a jerk. They take the elevator to his floor, where Chanyeol repeatedly hits the doorbell with a shaky hand, and the chimes echo haphazardly inside the apartment. “Come on, come on,” he mutters, but Baekhyun doesn’t come, and the sharp fingers of fear clutch harder at Jongdae’s chest.

“Let me,” he pushes Chanyeol aside and keys in _0404_. The lock clicks open, and mixed with his relief that Baekhyun hasn’t changed his code is the sadness that his code is still Nari’s birthday. The apartment is dark and silent, and Chanyeol rushes inside ahead of him. Neither of them stop to take off their shoes.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol calls. He pushes open the door to their right, which leads to a dark bedroom. He flicks on the light, and seeing that the bed is empty, goes in to check the attached bathroom. Jongdae moves forward, past the kitchen area and into the lounge which opens up ahead of him. The blinds are drawn over the floor-to-ceiling window, and the room feels strangely empty. He realises that all the interesting, eclectic artwork that had given Baekhyun’s place such character is gone from the walls and shelves. It must have all belonged to Nari.

“Baekhyun?” he repeats Chanyeol’s call and gets no reply. He’s starting to doubt that Baekhyun is even home, but it’s way too scary to think about where he might be if he’s not home. He walks towards the windows with the intention of opening the blinds and getting better light. He steps past the couch, and suddenly everything else is driven from his mind. Cold dread hits him like a wall, and he’s flinging a blanket aside, he’s on his knees beside the couch, his hands are on Baekhyun’s shoulders, his name stumbling from lips that are suddenly numb. Baekhyun is motionless and cool to the touch. His eyes are closed, and his skin is pale and waxy, and seems to have collapsed onto the underlying contours of his skull. But he is not stiff, and when Jongdae leans close to Baekhyun’s mouth, he feels a faint, cool breath against his cheek.

Jongdae lets out a shaky breath and focuses, and suddenly he is calm. Now he has a patient in front of him, and he has his medical knowledge, and he knows what to do. The consciousness acronym guides him with its simple reliability. AVPU - _alert, verbal, pain, unresponsive_. He calls his friend’s name, loud and firm into his ear, and shakes his shoulders gently. “Baekhyun? Baekhyun, if you can hear me, I need you to open your eyes.” When there is no response, he makes a fist and rubs his knuckles hard against Baekhyun’s sternum. This is a painful stimulus, and now Baekhyun responds. His head shifts slightly and he moans, but doesn’t fully awaken.

Jongdae raises his voice and shouts, “Chanyeol, he’s here!” Chanyeol’s running footsteps approach from across the apartment, and Jongdae looks up just long enough to tell Chanyeol that Baekhyun is alive and responding to pain but not to verbal stimuli. Then he’s back to Baekhyun. He places his fingers to the carotid artery and feels the pulse flutter against his fingers, too weak, too fast.

“He’s hypotensive and tachycardic,” he says to Chanyeol. He takes Baekhyun’s hand and pinches the cool, dry skin up. It remains pinched even when he’s taken his fingers away. “No fever, but he’s severely dehydrated.”

“He may not have moved since Wednesday,” Chanyeol says. They look at each other for a moment, and then Jongdae says, “We need to get him to the ED.” If Chanyeol is right, Baekhyun hasn’t had any fluids for four and a half days. His organs will fail, could already be failing. Oral rehydration won’t be enough. They need IV fluids, and fast.

“Get water,” Chanyeol orders, and as Jongdae gets up to obey, he covers Baekhyun’s chilled body with the blanket, then lifts him from the couch in his arms and stands up easily. The burden he carries is too light. Jongdae finds a couple of bottles of water in the otherwise empty fridge. It’s not going to be enough, but they can at least attempt to start the rehydration process, if they can get Baekhyun to wake up enough to drink.

Chanyeol carries Baekhyun carefully and Jongdae gets the door. As they take the elevator down Jongdae grabs Baekhyun’s thin, dry hand and calls his name again.

“Baekhyun, Chanyeol and I are taking you to the hospital. You’re badly dehydrated and we need to get you checked out.” He squeezes Baekhyun’s hand gently. “Can you hear me? Open your eyes.” This time Baekhyun’s eyelids flicker, and he gives a weak, faint cry. Jongdae’s heart clenches at the pitiful sound.

“It’s okay,” Chanyeol’s deep voice is soothing. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be fine. Try and stay awake for me, okay?”

Baekhyun hasn’t opened his eyes, but his cracked lips move. Jongdae leans closer, and the faint words he hears nearly break his heart. “...yeol,” Baekhyun whispers, “help me…”

“We will. We’re taking you to hospital, don’t worry. You’re going to be okay,” Jongdae repeats Chanyeol’s assurances, keeping his voice calm and steady.

He holds Baekhyun against him in the back seat while Chanyeol drives at top speed back to the hospital, and tries to get his friend to drink a few sips of water. Baekhyun is confused and keeps slipping back towards unconsciousness, and it’s all Jongdae can do to keep him awake. When they get back to the hospital, Chanyeol gathers Baekhyun from the back of the car, carries him through the ED doors, and yells for help.

Triage nurses hurry over, guiding Chanyeol past the reception and into a nearby curtained bay so he can put Baekhyun down on a bed. When a resident arrives, he explains the circumstances in which Baekhyun was found, the tachycardia, dehydration and level of alertness, and then he and Chanyeol are forced to step back to get out of the way of more arriving staff. The ED team surrounds the bed and works like clockwork, swift and calm, and Jongdae knows he can trust them to do the best for his friend. They’re trained in this speciality and they know exactly what to do.

With Baekhyun in good hands, Jongdae turns to Chanyeol. “Are you okay?” he asks. Chanyeol shakes his head, and suddenly there are tears pouring down his face. Jongdae wraps his arms tightly around his taller friend, and Chanyeol lowers his head to hide his face in Jongdae’s shoulder. He can feel the shuddering breaths as Chanyeol tries to choke back his sobs.

“He’s okay, he’s okay,” he whispers repeatedly, holding Chanyeol tight. “Listen, they found a vein. That’s good, that means they’ll be able to rehydrate him,” he knows Chanyeol knows all this, but it can’t hurt repeating. His friend is badly shocked right now, and after a couple of moments Jongdae guides him towards a couple of chairs that are pushed against the wall. Chanyeol sits and buries his face in his large hands, and Jongdae puts an arm around his shoulders. He’s shocked too, and horrified by how bad Baekhyun looks despite his reassuring words to Chanyeol, but his friend needs him, so he pushes his own feelings down. It’s something he’s been getting rather a lot of practice at doing lately.

“Do you want me to call Yeonseok?” he murmurs quietly into his ear. Chanyeol chokes on a sob. He shakes his head, and then, after a couple of seconds, nods, face still hidden. Jongdae gets his phone and finds the number Yeonseok gave him the night Jongdae came over.

“Jongdae?” It’s the second time today that someone has spoken his name down the phone with surprise, and it reminds Jongdae that he promised to call Nari. He holds that thought as Yeonseok keeps talking. “Is something wrong? Is Chanyeol okay?”

Being a police officer must have given Chanyeol’s boyfriend some sharp instincts. “He’s okay,” he reassures the worried man quickly. “But we’ve had a situation. One of our friends is in the emergency room.”

“Is it Baekhyun?” Yeonseok asks, and Jongdae realises Chanyeol must have talked about him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Chanyeol’s pretty upset. Can I pass you over?”

“Please,” Yeonseok says, and Jongdae takes one of Chanyeol’s hands away from his face and puts his phone into it. Chanyeol keeps his other hand over his face as he presses the phone to his ear. He appears unable to speak, but Yeonseok must be talking and doing a good job of calming his boyfriend down because Chanyeol’s tears start to slow and his breathing evens out as he listens. Jongdae rubs his friend’s back and watches the ED team working on Baekhyun.

After a while, Minseok appears and talks to the ED resident, then turns and sees Jongdae and Chanyeol on the chairs. He comes over and looks at them. Chanyeol glances up, but is still listening to Yeonseok, so it’s left to Jongdae to stand up and greet the ED chief. “How is he?” he asks Minseok. He’s grateful that his friend has taken the time to come and talk to them. He could have left it to his junior resident.

“He’s stable,” Minseok says, “though we’re concerned about acute kidney failure. The tests will be back soon. Dr. Min says you think he may not have had fluids for four days?”

Jongdae nods. “It may have been a suicide attempt,” he says, and although he’d thought he was handling his emotions pretty well, his voice cracks. His eyes prickle, and he swallows hard. “Can you get him a psych assessment?”

“Of course. I’ll arrange one as soon as he’s alert,” Minseok says. He puts a hand on Jongdae’s arm. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Jongdae says, knowing that Minseok knows he’s lying, but what else can he do? No use having two people in tears down here. Jongdae isn’t naturally good at internalizing his feelings, but, he supposes a little sadly, practice makes perfect. Besides, he has more to do. Chanyeol is still on his phone, so he fishes in Chanyeol’s pocket and finds his phone so he can call Nari. He explains what happened and reassures her that it’s not her fault. He calls the paediatric ward and asks them if they can cover Chanyeol for the afternoon. Then he calls the kind, motherly older lady he knows in pastoral services and asks her to come and sit with Chanyeol, because he knows his own department can’t spare him and he doesn’t want to leave Chanyeol alone, even with Yeonseok on the phone to him. When everything is arranged, he takes a last, unhappy look at Baekhyun, who is still unconscious but now has multiple IV lines providing him with the fluids he needs, and goes back to work.

\---

Chanyeol has lost track of time. His tears have now dried up, there’s no more left to cry and he’s holding onto Jongdae’s phone in an iron grip. He doesn’t want to lose it. Yeonseok has promised to come pick him up, and the older lady beside him sends him a wordless smile, eyes crinkling in the way only a mother’s can, and he swallows a lump. The ED trauma team has left Baekhyun to go on to new cases and only a nurse hangs about in there, making sure the fluids still go in effectively. He even seems to gain some color on the bed. Minseok has arranged a psychiatric assessment for tomorrow morning when Baekhyun gains back his consciousness, and they’ll keep him for overnight observation. Chanyeol wants to stay with him in the hospital all night, sleep and tomorrow’s patients be damned, but Yeonseok has more sense than to let him.

He hears Yeonseok before he sees him. The woman at his side looks up with a question shining in her eyes when the police officer in the entrance turns towards them. Yeonseok is still wearing his uniform and even though Chanyeol has calmed down considerably, his boyfriend still looks concerned. Chanyeol should feel bad for worrying him, but all his normal reactions have been overwhelmed by the tangled mess of shock and terror inside him, and as those emotions start to lessen with the knowledge that Baekhyun is safe now, the thread of guilt that’s been there all along makes itself known.

The woman next to Chanyeol looks up at the approaching police officer enquiringly, but Yeonseok anticipates her question and sends her a smile.

“I’m Chanyeol’s best friend,” he says. “Thank you for taking care of him until I could get here.”

Yeonseok switches places with the woman, and Chanyeol looks at his boyfriend through a glaze of leftover tears. When Yeonseok puts a hand on his shoulder, all the emotions he has just calmed down from flood him again, but this time they’re mixed with an overwhelming need for intimacy. If only Yeonseok would hug him, but Yeonseok, of course, will obey Chanyeol’s own rules of never showing affection for him anywhere his colleagues or friends might see. It takes a few deep breaths not to break out into another set of tears right then and there.

“Let’s go home, Chanyeol,” Yeonseok says and Chanyeol nods with a sniffle. The drive home is silent because Chanyeol is consumed by swirling thoughts, all driven by a horrible mixture of anxiety and guilt. He failed Baekhyun. He knew he was struggling, he saw the warning signs, but he didn’t do enough. He didn’t realise how bad it was, and he’d truly thought Baekhyun had been doing better since the night Chanyeol brought him home for fear his friend might be a danger to himself. He’d wanted to be wrong. He’d wanted with all his heart to believe Baekhyun’s promises, because the sight of his friend suffering was so hard to bear, and so he let himself believe, he let himself trust a person who was too sick to be safely trusted.

Hindsight torments him. He should have checked on Baekhyun over the weekend, he should have made time to find Jin or one of Baekhyun’s other residents and ask them to look out for him while Chanyeol wasn’t working. Instead, he believed what he wanted to believe, and because he was so stupid, Baekhyun nearly died.

His anguished unanswered questions to Jongdae in the car are still with him. Why didn’t Baekhyun tell them about the break-up? Is it Chanyeol’s fault? Does he not listen well enough when his friends come to him with problems? Or did Baekhyun keep it secret in the same way Chanyeol keeps secrets, for fear of being rejected, of being seen as a different person, as a wrong person, as a failure? Could Baekhyun sense that Chanyeol has never been truly honest with him and think that he couldn’t be trusted? And what right does Chanyeol even have to expect his friends to trust him when he can’t bring himself to trust them?

Fear grips his heart once again, but this time it’s all mixed up with the heavy weight of his own secrets. Yeonseok stops the car in the parking garage, but doesn’t get out of the car. Chanyeol is too busy hyperventilating to notice his boyfriend looking at him.

“Here,” Yeonseok says and puts a rectangular file in Chanyeol’s hands. “Inhale on the short sides, exhale on the longer ones. Let your finger trace the sides so you don’t have to focus on where you are.”

Chanyeol does as he’s told and it takes a few minutes for his breathing to stabilize. He exhales shakily and looks at Yeonseok. The other man sends him a kind smile and reaches out to take the file back from him.

“Let’s get inside,” he whispers and gets out of the car to open the passenger door for Chanyeol and help him. The walk up the stairs to their apartment helps clear Chanyeol’s head. He feels almost okay when they enter their apartment and he doesn’t need Yeonseok’s help into the kitchen. A glass of water is surprisingly refreshing after crying. Yeonseok just looks at him from the doorway.

“Can we please sit in the living room and talk?”

Chanyeol can hear something in his voice, something he doesn’t hear very often and usually only in relation to really scary situations in his job. It’s something akin to fear, but not quite. Chanyeol would honestly rather just go to bed and escape into exhausted sleep, but he doesn’t want to blow Yeonseok off. He’s had to handle Chanyeol in a state he’s never seen him before today, of course he’s worried.

They sit on the couch and Yeonseok reaches over to pull Chanyeol into a hug. Chanyeol realises that this isn’t just to comfort him. It’s to comfort Yeonseok, to make sure that Chanyeol really is okay. He wraps his long arms around the smaller man and crushes him into his chest. The body heat wraps around them and they sit on the couch as the wall clock counts down the seconds. When Yeonseok lets go of Chanyeol, he sighs and fixes his gaze onto Chanyeol’s eyes.

“What is going through your mind right now, babe?” he asks and Chanyeol knows it’s his time to talk. Jongdae only told Yeonseok it’s Baekhyun, but during their phone call in the ED, Chanyeol hadn’t said a word. Not one. He hasn’t been able to verbalize everything that’s been going on in his mind.

“I’m a bad friend,” he whispers and Yeonseok blinks in surprise. It’s not what he was expecting and Chanyeol knows he wants to contradict him, but he keeps talking before his boyfriend can say anything.

“You remember how a couple of weeks ago I found Baekhyun on the footbridge, and I brought him home because I was scared that night, even though he promised he wasn’t suicidal. I told you I thought he was depressed, but he’s been acting so much better in the last few weeks. I really thought he was getting better until today.” Saying it out loud to Yeonseok isn’t as difficult as it was telling Jongdae. Maybe it’s because the words have already left him once today. Maybe it’s because it’s Yeonseok. Whatever it is, it feels better to say it out loud. “When I heard he hadn’t come to work since Wednesday, God - “ he breaks off and has to take a deep breath as the memory of that heartstopping fear hits him. “I just, I just _knew_. I was sure he’d killed himself and I was too late…” Yeonseok takes both his hands. His skin is warm and Chanyeol feels the calluses of his tough palms on his softer skin. He focuses on the sensation and breathes.

“It should have been better when we found him but he was so sick, I was so scared of losing him before we even made it to hospital. We don’t know everything yet because he hasn’t been alert enough to tell us, but he was so dehydrated he was on the verge of organ failure. If I hadn’t made plans to meet him for lunch and found out he wasn’t at work, he would have died.” Horror makes his voice tremble. “He probably only survived four days without water because he stayed on the couch and never moved.” Now the tears are glazing his eyes again, and his voice wobbles more as they threaten to fall.

“How does all that make you think you’re a bad friend?” Yeonseok asks gently.

“Because I knew,” Chanyeol whispers. “I’m worse than Jongdae, because I knew he was struggling. I’d found him on the bridge, I’d seen he wasn’t eating, I’d even brought him home and told you I was worried... I was trying to help him, but I didn’t do enough, and when he acted better I believed him.” Both his hands clench into tight fists. “I believed him like the stupid idiot I am. Why didn’t I see how bad it was? How could I let myself believe he was okay?”

“Hey,” Yeonseok’s voice is gentle but firm as he retakes Chanyeol’s hands, uncurling the tight fingers and interlacing them with his own. “You’re not stupid. You were doing your best.”

“It wasn’t good enough. I almost lost one of my best friends,” Chanyeol whispers. He blinks to prevent the tears from leaking down his cheeks. Yeonseok lets go of his hands to wrap his arms around him again. They sit there in silence for a few moments before Yeonseok speaks again. They’re pressed so close that Chanyeol can hear the vibration of his voice deep in his chest as he speaks. It seems to soothe the raggedness there.

“It sounds like Baekhyun was doing a really good job of hiding how bad he was feeling. Not just from you, but from everyone. You were being a wonderful friend, Chanyeol. You were the only one who had seen something was wrong, and you were looking out for him, but if he chose to hide it there was nothing you could do to change his mind.” He holds him a little tighter. “Dear one, I’ve worked so many suicide cases. It’s never the fault of those left behind. It’s an illness, just like the other illnesses you treat, and those are never the fault of the people trying to help them, are they? You are not to blame.”

Chanyeol nods against Yeonseok’s shoulder, and Yeonseok continues. “Besides that, you saved his life. You’d planned to meet him so you knew there was something wrong when he didn’t show up. You knew enough to go to his house and check on him immediately, instead of believing his staff that he was just off sick. Nobody else would have done that. It’s because you were being such a _good_ friend, Chanyeol, that Baekhyun is alive right now.”

Yeonseok’s words sink in and give Chanyeol the perspective he needs. He’s still feeling the residues of shock and fear, but he listens to his boyfriend’s calm voice and feels the vibrations going through him, and knows that Yeonseok is right. Looking at it that way, it’s true. Chanyeol was looking out for Baekhyun in the best way he knew how. “How do you always know exactly the right things to say?” he murmurs, and feels Yeonseok’s soft laughter.

“Because I know you. Because I love you. Because you’re the sweetest and most beautiful person in the entire world,” he says, and Chanyeol closes his eyes as Yeonseok strokes his hair.

After a few minutes, Chanyeol pulls away slightly so that they can see each other’s faces again.

“I’m scared,” he says softly.

“Why?”

“Baekhyun hid his pain from us. He kept it secret, and it brought him to this. I keep secrets too. I hide my feelings. I hide my truth,” Chanyeol is whispering again. He fears the words will travel through the walls. “I’m scared that I’m pushing my friends away. I want them to trust me, but I don’t trust them. How is that fair?” he turns anguished eyes on Yeonseok. “I’m scared that keeping secrets is becoming too heavy for me to bear.”

“Is Baekhyun gay?” Yeonseok asks. He isn’t afraid to say it out loud and he isn’t whispering like Chanyeol. Chanyeol shakes his head and looks down into his lap. He starts fumbling with a thread in the couch and Yeonseok gently peels his hand away from it and links their fingers again to stop him from destroying it.

“Then your secrets aren’t the same. Just the fact that you keep a secret doesn’t mean you’re not a good friend,” Yeonseok says. “Baekhyun kept a secret too. Do you think he’s a bad friend for doing that?”

“No, of course not!” Chanyeol is startled. Yeonseok smiles at him, and Chanyeol gets the point.

“I believe that when you’re ready to share who you really are, your friends will accept you,” Yeonseok says. It’s not the first time he’s said this, not by any means, but tonight it strikes Chanyeol a little more deeply than it ever has before. “Jongdae hasn’t rejected you, has he? He hasn’t treated you any different. He loves you for who you are, and any friend worth having will do the same. If the burden is too heavy, it’s okay to let it go.”

“You’re right, I know,” Chanyeol whispers, but his face is still troubled, and there’s both sadness and love in Yeonseok’s gaze.

“What’s going to happen to Baekhyun now?” Yeonseok asks after another beat of silence. Chanyeol forces his brain to think of the practicalities. He won’t be admitted to the hospital for more than a night or two to clear his dehydration, but there’s no way Chanyeol can allow him to go back home to his apartment alone. He can’t trust Baekhyun to keep himself safe, and he can’t, he truly can’t go through another day like today again.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. Yeonseok reaches over to lift his chin so he can look into Chanyeol’s eyes. He’s searching for something in them, but Chanyeol doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know what reassurance he can possibly give Yeonseok right now when all he feels is lost and afraid.

“He can stay with us,” Yeonseok says, and there’s not a hint of doubt or hesitation in his words. Chanyeol frees himself of Yeonseok’s hand and looks around. They have a guest bedroom, usually occupied by Yeonseok’s younger brother when he’s in town, but Baekhyun could move in with them. A feeling of peace settles in Chanyeol’s chest at the thought and he nods.

“Yes. He can stay with us, but…”

“But?”

“We still have to work,” he says. Call shifts for Chanyeol and night shifts for Yeonseok often have them home at different times, but there will still be hours where neither of them will be home and Chanyeol will risk entering his home to find Baekhyun gone beyond help. “He’ll be on his own and…” he trails off again.

Yeonseok tilts his head slightly. “I still have a week of annual leave left,” he says and smiles. “I’m sure Lieutenant Choi won’t mind if I take it now. We’ll make it work, love.”

Chanyeol wraps his arms around Yeonseok in gratitude and the overwhelming love he feels almost forces itself out of him as tears. His boyfriend is willing to give up his leave to look after Chanyeol’s friend, a man he’s only met once, and Chanyeol knows it’s because of Yeonseok’s love and care for him that he would so willingly offer to do that. Yeonseok chuckles a little with his arms full of Chanyeol.

“How did I ever deserve you?” Chanyeol mumbles into Yeonseok’s shoulder. A warm strong hand runs down Chanyeol’s back in calming motions.

“You deserve everything good in the universe,” Yeonseok whispers into Chanyeol’s hair, and for once, Chanyeol thinks he might almost believe it.

“I love you,” Chanyeol whispers. “Thank you.”


	17. February 14th

Sehun steps off the train in Busan with his eyes glued to his phone. He only just avoids bumping into a family of four reuniting and steers to the left towards the escalators. The wind bites as he leaves the train station and he shrugs his coat a little closer around him. He’s still focused on his phone as he continues down the street. The small blue dot on his phone map lets him know exactly where he is. Sehun is on a mission today.

He looks up when his phone tells him he’s arrived. He's standing in front of a large glass shop front. There’s a sign above the door with the shop’s name and what seems like at least a million flowers in buckets in the window. A small bell rings above his head as he enters and an elderly lady sends him a big smile. She’s wearing a dirty apron and kindness seems to radiate off her. Sehun can’t help but feel welcomed.

“What can I do for you, young man?” she asks as she puts away a few stems of rhododendron flowers.

“Can I get a bouquet with sunflowers?” he asks, trying not to let it show how shy he feels at the request.

“That will take a couple of hours.” She nods towards a small poster which explains the wait time because of pre-orders for Valentine’s Day. Sehun’s heart sinks a little. It hadn’t occurred to him that florists would be busier today. The elderly lady tilts her head to look at him.

“I can wrap a few sunflowers for you in a couple of minutes if you want that instead,” she offers. Sehun nods. It might not be exactly what he’d hoped for, but sunflowers are Mikyung’s favourite and he wants them more than one of the pre-made bouquets on display.

The lady turns and walks into a back area to put them together for him. Sehun looks around the shop and wonders at just how many flowers there really are. Wandering around admiring all the different kinds fills the fifteen minutes he has to wait for the florist to bring him five sunflowers wrapped in brown paper tied with a lace ribbon. They’re still beautiful even without being in a proper bouquet, and Sehun thanks her before leaving.

He’s been so invested in his surprise that he hasn’t yet managed to appreciate the city he’s in, the city Mikyung has fallen so hard in love with. As he walks it’s not hard to see why it appeals to her so much. He can hear the waves as he nears the port and the sea breeze hits him in the face. Seagulls scream over him the closer he gets but still the large main roads gives it a city feeling, like Seoul. After a few minutes, the sun breaks through the clouds overhead. The temperature doesn’t rise much with the sun's appearance, but there is no snow and the wind isn’t as icy as back home. He pockets his gloves and lets his fingers feel the cold winter air.

He’s nearing the Busan Ilbo office when a building he passes grabs his attention. The sign over the door indicates a GP’s office, but the sign in the window says For Sale. It doesn’t give a lot of information on why the office is for sale, only a phone number to call if interested. As Sehun stands there, it seems to slowly transform in his mind. The dark, empty room behind the window lights up, bright wooden flooring and white walls making an inviting waiting area. He sees a consultation room and small surgery for excisions, even though he can’t see how big the office is behind the window, and before he really knows what he’s doing he’s found his phone and is adding the number to his contacts.

He stares at the number on his lit screen, wondering what he’s thinking. He certainly has no intention of buying a business, but for some reason, he can’t get himself to delete the numbers. Maybe it’s something to do with the sudden, unexpected dream behind them.

Sehun shakes his head and pockets his phone. It’s already midday and he has a mission to accomplish.

It’s around 12:30 when he finally reaches the newspaper office. He stops in front of the glass doors and looks up at the tall, imposing building, and has to take a deep breath to calm himself. Is this stupid? No, this is romantic, he tells himself, and steps inside. The hot air in the front room has the cold skin on his fingers tingling. The sunflowers in his hands seem to brighten the room unexpectedly. The woman who sits behind the reception lifts her eyebrow when she sees him and Sehun feels uncertain again. He grips the sunflowers tightly and walks up to the receptionist.

“Is Cha Mikyung in?” he asks. She narrows her eyes and measures him up almost like he's a criminal. Sehun forces himself to stand his ground.

“Who can I say is looking for her?” she asks eventually, picking up a phone from the desk in front of her and dialing. Sehun makes a half-hearted gesture, he wanted to surprise Mikyung, but the receptionist is intimidating and he quickly gives up on the idea of trying to explain.

“Oh Sehun,” he answers, and the receptionist repeats his name into the phone. The receptionist is still looking at the flowers in his hand with narrowed eyes as she asks him to wait on one of the hard plastic chairs lined up in the middle of the room. Sehun sits down obediently. As he waits, his thoughts wander back to the office he’d seen. Could he really move to Busan if the opportunity presented itself? It all feels so big, so scary somehow. Sehun has only ever worked at Hangang. He knows every procedure in and out, he knows the staff, he has friends, and he never has to worry about the cost of staff or medical instruments. All he has to do is treat patients.

Warm hands suddenly cover his vision and he hears a giggle from behind. They surprise him more than he would like to admit, but he tries to mask his shock with a small grin. When he pries them away, he turns around on his chair and his heart glows at the sight of his girlfriend.

“Hey, stranger,” Mikyung says, smiling. Sehun loves the sound of her voice so much. She sees the flowers on the seat next to him and tilts her head.

“Are those for me?”

Sehun grabs them before he slides onto the floor on one knee and holds them out towards her. Mikyung looks down at him, confusion written all over her face, and Sehun battles his grin.

“Cha Mikyung, you’re the love of my life. I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone but you and I don’t want to ever give up on you, on us.” Mikyung's jaw drops. “So, Mikyung...." he reaches the flowers out towards her. "Will you be my Valentine?”

Mikyung blinks a couple of times before starting to laugh.

“Oh Sehun, you utter ass,” she says as she takes the flowers. Sehun gets off the floor and reaches out to embrace her. The flowers get a little squashed between their chests, but she doesn’t comment on it when he lets her go.

“So, will you?” he asks again.

“I can’t believe you just did that, but yes, I’ll be your Valentine. I expect you have a lot of romantic stuff planned with such a Valentine’s proposal?” Mikyung raises her eyebrows, and Sehun grins.

“Are you off work yet?”

She shakes her head and links their fingers with the hand that isn’t holding the flowers.

“Not quite. Come on, let me introduce you to my coworkers."

The small office she sits in holds four journalists, desks divided by noise cancelling screens. Despite the effort to lower the volume in the office, it’s still incredibly loud. A middle-aged woman sends him a smile as Mikyung introduces him to her and then moves on to the two men in the room. One is fresh out of college and the other is a tanned, muscular guy, perhaps in his mid-30's, with shaggy bleached hair.

“This is Choi Yoochun!” Mikyung beams. “The longboarder I told you about.”

Sehun feels a strange hint of unease well up in his stomach. They’re of similar heights, but Yoochun is all broad shoulders and muscle, where Sehun is built like a rope.

“Oh, the invisible boyfriend,” Yoochun jokes and Mikyung laughs. Sehun forces himself to smile and greet the other man politely for Mikyung’s sake, but inwardly he seethes. He tightens his fist in his coat pocket and puts a possessive arm around Mikyung. Yoochun chuckles as he goes back to the piece he’s working on and Sehun knows the man has just seen straight through him. Embarrassment crawls up his neck and he turns away to stand behind Mikyung as she goes back to her desk.

Thirty minutes later Mikyung finally finishes her work and spins around on her chair to beam up at him. She leads him out of the office with her hand in his, and as they walk outside his insecurity slowly diminishes. By the time they get to Mikyung’s place it’s gone, which is a great relief to Sehun. He’s never been jealous before and he doesn’t like it, but Yoochun made him feel so inadequate.

Mikyung puts her sunflowers in a vase and then turns to look at him. “What now?” she asks. Sehun reaches out to take her hand.

“Let’s go sightseeing.”

They take a taxi to Songdo beach which is mostly vacated at this time of year. The walkway is beautiful and the waves are small but glassy and well-formed, inviting despite frigid temperatures. They don’t have their surfboards and winter wetsuits though, so he leads Mikyung to a small red metal staircase. She stops him and looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

“What?” he asks. “It’ll only take thirty minutes on foot to walk to Amnam park and I bet it’ll look stunning in winter. Come on!” He leads her up the stairs and they slowly walk hand in hand around the island.

“Why couldn’t we have taken the cable car?” Mikyung complains a few minutes in. Sehun gasps dramatically.

“What happened to my sports-enthusiastic girlfriend?” She narrows her eyes at him and Sehun can’t help but chuckle. He’s trying to contain it, but it’s not possible with the way she looks at him. It doesn’t take long before she’s giggling as well.

“She went to work aaaaall day,” she elaborates and Sehun snorts with laughter. Mikyung ignores him, but seems to have gotten more energy at his laughter and she pushes him forward on the path around the cliffs. With the rocky cliffs on one side and the blue ocean on the other, this is a sight unlike another. It must be even more spectacular during summer. It takes thirty minutes as promised before they end up on the other side on a large platform in the park. Mikyung giggles with happiness and Sehun laughs at her as she starts running around on the platform. He finds his phone and snaps a few pictures of her without her knowledge. After a few minutes of just admiring the view, Mikyung reaches for her own phone and asks a couple of foreign tourists to take a picture of them together. Sehun embraces her as they look towards the couple taking pictures. For the last one, he leans down to kiss her.

“Ooh, look at us,” Mikyung says and turns her phone towards him so he can see the photo of them kissing with the ocean in the background.

They walk through the park back towards Busan city life. When they get to the road, Sehun flags down another taxi and ushers Mikyung inside. He puts his hands over her eyes as they get closer to their destination and Mikyung protests but when he doesn’t let up she accepts her fate. When they arrive, Sehun allows Mikyung to look around as he pays for the taxi.

“I don’t get it,” Mikyung says when the taxi drives away. Sehun reaches out to take her hand again. He points to a staircase that leads down and she looks at him skeptical. He just shakes his head and drags her towards the staircase. Going down a few steps leads them into a completely different world. Mikyung snorts when she realises where they’re going.

“Oh my god, you’re so childish,” she laughs. Sehun pouts cutely at her until she relents and gives him a kiss.

“Who cares, my girlfriend still loves me.” Mikyung shrugs, but kisses him again. He chuckles at her and pulls her into the 3D trick-eye museum.

“That isn’t very chivalrous,” Mikyung points out when Sehun asks her to get on top of a sea monster and pretend to battle it.

“I can’t fight it beside you," Sehun points out. "Who would take the pictures then?” A tap on his shoulder has him turning around and an employee of the museum smiles at him.

“I can take the pictures,” she suggests.

“Yes! Come here and fight this sea monster for me, oh brave warrior,” Mikyung says as she gets off the sea monster and pretends to lie in its mouth and play dead. Sehun shakes his head but still gets into character as he hands over the phone and goes over to pretend to slay the monster and save the girl. The employee directs their story and takes photos of them, ending with one of Mikyung in Sehun’s hands as he leans down to give her a true love’s kiss.

It’s getting dark outside when they leave the museum. Sehun leads Mikyung down the streets until they reach the richer parts of Busan.

“We can’t go fine dining dressed like this,” Mikyung complains but Sehun assures her it’s okay. She looks perfect, always has and always will in his opinion. He, himself, just has a nice shirt and a pair of beige pants beneath his coat, and the white blouse and black skirt she’s wearing will be fine. As they get closer to Ventanas, Mikyung sends him another glare.

“It’ll be fine. You look perfect.”

“You always say that,” she mumbles but Sehun ignores her as he leads her inside and they get their table. Sitting at a table with the most amazing ocean view only makes the experience better. It might be getting darker, but small lights on the streets and on the fishing boats seem to line up just for them.

“You know, if they turn on fireworks you’ve really outdone yourself,” Mikyung says. Sehun snaps his fingers and sends her a cute pout.

“I knew there was something I’d forgotten!”

When their dinner finishes, they walk hand in hand towards Mikyung's house. She leans her head on his shoulder as they wait for the walk signals at the crossings and Sehun links their fingers together. They reach her house around nine in the evening.

“Will you be leaving tonight?” she asks as they sit on her couch, her legs slung over his, hand resting on his chest. There’s a hint of sadness in her smile that disappears when he shakes his head. He leans down to touch her nose with his as he whispers his ‘no’. Mikyung giggles and pulls back a little. Sehun tries to follow but doesn’t get far before he pushes Mikyung down on the couch and almost falls on top of her. Their legs are tangled together to keep them steady. Mikyung is laughing and Sehun joins in as he slowly gets up into a sitting position again. She is still laughing softly when he helps her up as well. She traces figures with her finger on his chest and Sehun closes his eyes and soaks up the love that is so palpable in the room between them. He misses this. These evenings where it is just him and Mikyung with no expectations. He opens them again when he feels cold fingers on his bare chest and realises Mikyung has unbuttoned his shirt enough to put her fingers against his skin.

“Did I live up to your expectations?” he asks her and she smiles at him. With a whispered yes, she kisses him. When she lets go, she starts unbuttoning his shirt more. Sehun’s thoughts flashes back to the sign on the GP’s office he saw earlier. He imagines coming home every day to this, to love, to Mikyung. He shakes his head to rid himself of the image, breaking the kiss in the process. She tilts her head in a question.

“Something wrong?” she whispers.

Sehun smiles at her. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

He leans down to kiss her again and this time, his shirt isn’t the only one that is unbuttoned.

\---

  
  


Jongin sits behind the wheel of his car and shakes his head vigorously, trying to force his sleepiness away. He’s been awake for 36 hours straight, and he really can’t have any more coffee today. He’s nervous enough about what he’s doing without caffeine-induced anxiety adding to the mix. He rubs his eyes, then peers into the rear-vision mirror and wages war on his hair, which has been forced into weird, angled tufts by hours of sweating under a surgical cap. After a couple of fruitless minutes of finger-combing and smoothing, he’s forced to admit defeat. He leans across to the glove compartment for the grey woolen beanie he keeps in there and jams it over his head so that only a couple of wayward locks escape over his forehead and below his ears. He checks his appearance one last time, winces, and gets out of the car.

He walks towards the entrance, trying to ignore the tickles of nerves swimming in his stomach. As he approaches the building, a coach pulls up and disgorges a crowd of about sixty excited primary school-aged children, who spread out into the carpark with shrieks of excitement before the teachers and parent helpers start attempting to corral them. Jongin smiles a little as he pushes the door open and buys an adult entrance ticket before the school group pours in. It’s nice to see happy, healthy kids running around, because the kids Jongin usually sees are sick, injured, terrified, or a heart-wrenching combination of all three. He doesn’t think he’ll ever really be able to get used to seeing children in pain.

Ticket purchased, he hovers uncertainly in the entrance building, looking around to get his bearings. There’s a gift shop on one side and a cafe on the other, and straight ahead of him glass doors open out into the zoo proper. The walls in the entrance building are all either painted with bright animal murals or covered in plaques and framed certificates showing those who have donated to the zoo or sponsored animals. He stops to peer into the window of the gift shop, which is filled with exotic stuffed animals, toys, books and souvenir clothing with the zoo’s logo on it. There are animal mobiles and stuffed parrots hanging from the ceiling, and some of the nervousness spiking at Jongin begins to fade as the friendly atmosphere relaxes him a little.

Jongin hasn’t told Sohee he’s never been to a zoo. When he’d found out she was a zookeeper he’d been so astonished that she’d started laughing and gently closed his dropped jaw with a finger under his chin. To him, it sounds like something out of a story book or movie, because those are the only places he has come across zookeepers before. He had been far too shy to admit to her that he’d never even been to a zoo. Her passion for animals had radiated as she’d described all the animals to him, especially the big cats which are her specialty. How could he admit he’d never even seen a lion in real life to a girl who had had season tickets to the zoo every year as a child, and who had been a volunteer junior zookeeper as a teenager? He would have sounded to her like he came from another planet, and it would be too hard to explain why he had never been. He’d spent every spare hour of the week after meeting her watching Youtube clips from zoos all around the world so that he wouldn’t accidentally say something dumb and give himself away. Now his feed thinks he’s some kind of zoo enthusiast and constantly shows him videos from places he’s never even heard of and in languages he doesn’t speak, like Odense Zoo in Denmark and Orana Wildlife Park in New Zealand. His favourite clips, though, are from Australia Zoo in Queensland, and he has a dream to one day take Sohee there to meet all the unique Australian animals.

That’s a dream to be kept secret though, and taken out only once every now and then. It’s a precious thing to cherish and hide away again inside his heart, in case exposure to the harsh reality of the world breaks it. It’s tied into the way he can’t seem to quite dare to take the next step in this relationship. He can’t quite quell the fear that he's walking towards the rising sun, unable to see the plunging cliff-edge just before his feet.

He’s spaced out, staring into the glass window of the gift shop. Suddenly he finds himself in a swarm of children, their heads reaching no higher than his elbows. They’re all wearing school uniform, thick coats and backpacks. The noise is nearly deafening as they chatter and buzz with excitement. Jongin is trying to edge his way out of this sudden flood of small humans when a tall woman thrusts an armful of brightly-coloured A4 booklets topped with a box of new pencils against his chest. Startled, Jongin grabs them before they all fall to the floor.

“Can you hand these out, please?” she asks him, sounding hassled. She must have mistaken him for a parent. Jongin is about to correct her, but she’s already turned away to dump another armload on another adult, and he comes to the conclusion it’s going to be easier to just hand out the booklets than chase the teacher down in this noisy crowd.

“Who needs a booklet?” he calls to the children swarming everywhere, and immediately a small flock gathers around him, hands held out with bright eyes and cries of “me!” Jongin’s shy smile starts to show itself as he hands the workbooks and pencils out.

The teachers start splitting the kids into groups, and Jongin finds himself with a leftover booklet in his hands. It’s bright yellow and has a photograph of a lion on the front, and the child-friendly font reads “My Day at the Zoo”. He flicks it open and finds that the rainbow-coloured pages are filled with questions for the kids to find the answers to and fill in, interspersed with drawings and photos of the exhibits.

“And group three, you’re to go with Mrs. Lee, Mr. Jung and - sorry, what was your name again?” Jongin looks up and finds the hassled-looking teacher addressing him.

“Kim Jongin,” he says automatically, “but -”

“Mrs. Lee, Mr. Jung, and Mr. Kim,” she tells the children who are gathering around, and sends him an apologetic smile for forgetting his name before moving on to the next group. Jongin still doesn’t get the chance to explain that he’s not actually part of this school trip, and before he quite knows what is happening, he’s helping Mrs. Lee and the other adult helpers shepherd the twenty or so children that make up group three out of the doors and into the zoo proper.

“Mr. Kim, I lost my pencil.” A girl grabs at his elbow, eyes huge and lips quivering. Hurriedly Jongin finds her another pencil from the box he’s still carrying.

“Be careful with this one,” he tells her. She nods fervently and thanks him, and his smile becomes a little wider as he pats her head.

“Okay, group three, eyes on me!” a light, cheerful voice calls. Jongin’s heart lifts as he recognizes Sohee’s voice. He looks towards her as she jumps up onto a picnic bench and waves with both hands, beaming down at the kids. She’s wearing thick zookeeper’s cargo pants and a khaki fleece with the zoo’s logo on it, and the uniform is brightened up by a lion hat with a golden mane that sticks out around her face like a fluffy halo. Jongin’s heart gives a thump at how adorable she looks. She rivals the kids, for sure. “Daekwang Primary School, welcome to Bukhansan Zoo!” She claps her hands, and Jongin finds himself smiling as much as children crowding in front of him. Sohee doesn’t notice him standing with the teachers and parents at the back. All her attention is on the children as she introduces herself and tells them that she’ll be their tour guide around the zoo today. A few other zookeepers have separated their groups off, and Jongin decides that being mistaken for a parent helper might not be a bad thing at all. He’s been lucky enough to get into Sohee’s group, and he’s not about to give up the opportunity to see her in her natural environment. It’ll be a lot more fun than wandering around the zoo on his own waiting for her to finish. He pulls his beanie lower and adjusts his scarf until it covers his nose and mouth. He doesn’t want her to notice him.

“First of all, everyone open your booklets and fill in the first page,” Sohee instructs, and the children busy themself to obey. Jongin opens the first page of the leftover booklet he’s still holding. This book belongs to, he reads, and writes “Kim Jongin”. I am -- years old is next, and he writes “30” in the gap. He’s smiling slightly as he does. He knows he’s being childish, but for once he doesn’t care. Nobody here knows him, and he’s going to make the most of this opportunity and enjoy it as much as he would have if he’d gotten to go to the zoo as a kid.

He stays at the back as Sohee jumps off her bench and starts leading the group around the different exhibits. At each enclosure she stops and talks about the animals who live there, reminding the children each time to read the question for this exhibit in the booklet and listen carefully to what she says so that they can find the answer. Jongin fills out his booklet at least as diligently as the students. Some of the facts are really fascinating. At the giraffe exhibit Sohee tells them that a giraffe has the same amount of bones in its neck as a human, and Jongin is astonished. He’s an orthopaedic surgeon and he’d never heard that in his life. He watches Sohee run up a tall wooden platform and feed the enormous creatures flocking around with acacia leaves. All the kids giggle when a giraffe’s long purple tongue flicks out and licks her face. Sohee wipes her face with a grin and a pat to the giraffe’s head. Jongin supposes giraffes are nothing to her. He may not know much about animals, but he knows enough that giraffes are not very likely to actually eat his girlfriend.

The lion enclosure is a whole other story. Jongin’s heart is in his mouth as Sohee takes a bucket full of raw meat and locks herself into a double-gated cage which has a metal chute for her to drop the chunks of meat into the lion’s enclosure. She’s utterly fearless and her face is glowing as she drops the meat to the snarling animals, who thrust their shoulders against the bars with massive clangs, snatch their prizes as they fall and jog away deeper into the enclosure to devour them. He knows there are thick bars between the powerful creatures and his girlfriend, but the male lions are so huge they’re nearly as tall as she is, and thick muscle ripples beneath their golden fur. Seeing them in real life is completely different to watching them on documentaries. He’s awestruck by how much of a sheer force of nature the lions are. For the first time he thinks he might be able to understand Sohee’s fascination with them.

The tigers are, if possible, even more awe-inspiring than the lions. Where the lions had a kind of languid dignity, the tigers have an air of savagery. There are only two tigers, and they lie in separate enclosures and stare with deep, liquid gazes at the children, tails flicking slowly back and forth as Sohee explains that the tigers aren’t getting fed today because they only need to eat once every two or three days. She introduces the male tiger, Boris, and tells them that he’s a Siberian tiger and how his species are endangered. Her face softens with love as she looks at the male tiger, and Jongin has to hide a grin when he decides he's glad that Boris is a tiger and not a man. He doesn’t know if he could stand the competition. The female tiger, Rosie, is a new arrival from a different zoo and the two animals are being kept in separate enclosures until they get used to each other.

“Maybe if you come back next year, you might get to see Siberian tiger cubs,” Sohee says, to squeals of delight from the children. Jongin carefully writes down his answer to the question about Siberian tigers in his workbook - a Siberian tiger’s stripes are unique to each tiger, just like a person’s fingerprints - and follows the group across to the cheetahs.

“Which one is yours?” one of the other adults asks him as they walk, and Jongin ducks his head shyly.

“The zookeeper,” he admits, casting a quick glance at Sohee across the children’s heads.

“Oh!” The other man sounds surprised. “I assumed you were part of the school group.”

“I came to visit her at work, and the teacher mistook me for a parent,” Jongin explains. The other man laughs.

“Good of you to help out, in that case,” he says, then points out which of the children is his son. He’s got such a proud smile on his face as he watches the boy confer with a friend, their heads together as they write in their workbooks, and Jongin feels a faint twinge of sadness. He pushes the feeling away quickly and writes, the cheetah can go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in only three seconds, faster than most cars can accelerate.

It takes a couple of hours to get around the zoo, but time flies for Jongin and it’s over all too soon. He drops back as the teachers herd the kids back through the entrance and out towards the coach waiting in the carpark. The light is starting to fade and the zookeepers who took the tours are gathered together in the picnic area, conferring with each other. The nerves that left Jongin while he was on the tour disguised as a parent come flooding back, and for a moment he is horribly tempted to sneak away and pretend he was never here. It might not seem like a big deal to pick up one’s girlfriend from work on Valentine’s Day, but for Jongin it is a very big deal. It’s a big deal both to acknowledge Valentine’s Day as a person in a relationship, and to make an effort to make it special for his girlfriend. Doing this is another way of showing he’s serious about her, and he is serious about Sohee, so that should be okay - but there’s so much lying hidden beneath the surface, waiting to rise up every time he tries to take a step forward and drag him two steps back.

The decision to stay or flee is taken from his hands when the meeting breaks up and Sohee turns towards the entrance building. He knows the exact moment she sees him. Her eyes widen and then her face lights up. She runs towards him, beaming, and for a moment Jongin thinks he’s going to cry. That someone could have such a beautiful reaction, could show so much spontaneous joy upon seeing him, would be impossible to believe if he hadn’t just seen it for himself. He opens his arms and she runs into him, squeezing him as hard as he’s squeezing her.

“Jongin.” She says his name like a caress and tilts her head up to look into his face, her chin pressed against his sternum. Jongin is hard pressed not to lean down and kiss her right there in front of all her coworkers. His shyness gets the better of him, and he satisfies himself with just gazing into her eyes. Sohee smiles at him, unwraps her arms and grabs his hand, towing him towards the other zookeepers who are looking at them with interest.

“This is my boyfriend,” Sohee says proudly. Jongin bows and smiles shyly as he’s introduced to the reptile keeper, the bird keeper and the primate keeper.

“What do you do, Jongin?” the reptile keeper asks. When Jongin admits to being an orthopaedic surgeon there are raised eyebrows and impressed murmurs.

“Impressive,” the reptile keeper says. Jongin shakes his head, a little embarrassed at the reaction.

“Honestly, looking after snakes is at least as impressive,” he says. The reptile keeper gets a mischievous glint in his eye and offers to let him hold the Burmese python. Jongin takes an unconscious step backward. “Uh, no, that’s fine,” he says just a little too quickly, and all the keepers laugh.

“You’ll have to work on that, Sohee,” the reptile keeper teases. “I’m not sure I can approve a man who isn’t a snake-lover.”

“I’d like to see you try fixing someone’s broken spine, Gitae,” Sohee retorts. Jongin can’t help smiling at how fiercely she leaps to his defence, even though the reptile keeper is obviously joking.

As they say goodbye to the other keepers and walk hand-in-hand towards the exit, he finds himself wondering what it is that makes her defend him so swiftly. He hasn’t told her anything of his history, yet the way she just protected him from potential ridicule reminds him strongly of the way Taeyeon gets so fierce in similar situations. Sehun does it, too, he realises. His best friend gets angry and protective when something seems like it could hurt him. Unconsciously his smile fades and his steps slow as the wounded part of him makes itself known, self-doubt slipping through him. There’s something about Jongin that makes him a victim. Something that makes some people want to protect him, and makes other people want to hurt him. It’s his fault, the doubt whispers. Just like they told him. Everything happened because of him, because of the way he is...

“Jongin?” Sohee is looking up at him, concern in her lovely eyes as she searches his face. Jongin quickly shakes it off and smiles at her.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just tired.”

“Long shift?” She tugs him into the small cafe opposite the gift shop.

“30 hours,” he tells her. She widens her eyes, then turns to the young man behind the counter.

“Two Americanos,” she says with a smile. “Put them on my tab.”

“No, I’ll pay,” he protests, but she shakes her head and tows him to a booth table that looks out over the meerkat enclosure.

“I get a staff discount, might as well make the most of it.” She takes both of his hands in hers and holds them across the table. The fluffy lion hat is still on her head. “Why such a long shift?”

Shyness creeps up to colour his ears. He’s glad they’re hidden under his beanie. “It was a back-to-back. I was actually supposed to be on call tonight and have last night off, but I swapped so that I could come see you today.” The colour spreads from his ears to his cheeks. “You know, because it’s Valentine’s Day.” The last words are almost mumbled.

Sohee looks at him with an expression like her heart is melting. “You pulled a 30-hour shift just so you could come and pick me up from work?”

He nods, cheeks burning, but when she stands up to lean across the table and kiss him regardless of anyone else in the cafe who might be watching, Jongin knows that the back-to-back shift was worth it.

“You’re so good with kids,” he says when she’s sitting back down, cheeks pink to match his own. “I didn’t realise that was a part of being a zookeeper.”

“How did you know I was touring kids today?”

Jongin grins. “Because I saw you. I was there for the whole tour.”

“You were not.” Sohee looks disbelieving. “I would have seen you.”

“I was,” Jongin laughs at her expression. “I was going to look around the zoo on my own, but a teacher mistook me for a parent helper and it was easier to just go along with it. I was Mr. Kim for the afternoon.”

Sohee shakes her head and laughs. "I would definitely have noticed."

“It’s true!” Jongin protests. He pulls out his yellow “My Day at the Zoo” booklet from his coat pocket and spins it around to face her, opening the first page to show her where he wrote his name and age. “See? I filled in the booklet and everything!”

She takes the booklet and the smile spreads wide on her face as she flips the pages over. “No way,” she says, but he can see she believes him now. “You filled in the kids booklet? Oh my God, you’re so adorable, what do I even do with you?”

“I learned a lot,” Jongin tells her earnestly. Somehow he doesn’t mind being called adorable by Sohee. It’s different from the teasing way Taehee and Taeah call him that. “I didn’t know giraffes have the same number of vertebrae as humans do.”

“Of course that’s the thing you found most interesting.” She looks up from reading his answers to smirk at him. Her face goes a little more serious as she asks, “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”

Jongin shrugs. He’s not really sure he wants to get into answering that, so he leans forward further to try and see his own answers. “Did I get them all right?”

“What, you want me to mark it for you?”

“Mark it, teacher,” he whines. She shakes her head at him before taking the red pen she’d used to mark the kids’ books out of her pocket and starting to go through his answers, writing a big tick mark beside each one. Jongin’s nerves start to increase again as she reaches the end of the booklet. When she turns over the last page he finds himself staring fixedly at the table, the blush that had only just left his face rising back up. The last page of the booklet has a large empty square on it, with the instruction, Draw the thing you liked most about your day at the zoo and explain your drawing below. In the square, Jongin has sketched Sohee with her lion hat on her head, a branch of wispy acacia in her hand, one eye squinched shut and laughing as a giraffe licks her cheek with its long tongue. Underneath it he has written, “The thing I liked most about my day at the zoo was the zookeeper, Jeong Sohee.”

There’s a short silence, and then Sohee says with something a little like wonder in her voice, “Jongin, I didn’t know you could draw.”

Jongin risks a glance up. She’s gazing at the little sketch and her eyes are filling with tears. Alarmed, he reaches out for her hands. “What?” His heart sinks. “Don’t you like it? I know it’s not very good, it was just a quick -”

She interrupts him with a smile that glitters through unshed tears. “Don’t be stupid, Jongin. It’s beautiful. I love it. Nobody’s ever drawn me before.”

Relief floods him and it escapes him in a sigh, making her giggle. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve and looks at the drawing again. “Why didn’t you study art? I mean, this is only a sketch but there’s so much motion and life in it. You’re really talented.”

Jongin shakes his head, a little embarrassed to get such praise over something he dashed off so quickly. “I wanted to in high school,” he admits, “but my parents were against it.”

She looks at him and he sees the surprise in her face. He knows it’s because he never talks about his family. When she’d asked, he’d just said they weren’t close and changed the subject, and she’d been sensitive enough not to press him. He moves on quickly, not wanting to linger on the subject. “So, did I get them all right?”

She hesitates for a moment, and he gives her a pleading look. Don’t ask, his eyes beg. Please.

Sohee immediately looks down at the booklet and starts making a big show of tallying up his score. Jongin is so grateful he could cry. He doesn’t deserve a person like Sohee, but he needs her all the same. Their coffee arrives while she’s doing it, and Jongin decides that caffeine jitters are preferable to falling asleep at the wheel and starts to drink it.

“One hundred percent and ten percent,” Sohee announces after a minute, and Jongin pumps his fist in triumph.

“Wow, a more perfect than perfect score. What’s the extra ten percent for?”

“For making your favourite zookeeper extra happy today,” she wrinkles her nose playfully at him. “I was going to give this back to you so you could frame it and hang it on your office wall with your doctorate, but now you went and turned into an artwork, I think I’ll have to keep it.”

Jongin protests that it was just a quick sketch, but she just shakes her head and hugs the booklet defensively to her chest, and Jongin gives up. He really doesn’t see what’s so great about the sketch, but he’s glad he made her happy.

As they sip their coffee, Sohee tells him in much greater detail than she had on the tour about how Rosie the Siberian tiger is settling into her new home, how the introductions to Boris are going, and the plans they have to start a breeding program with the endangered tigers. Jongin hopes they succeed. He appreciates that it’s important to save the species, but if he’s honest, his hopes are really more because Sohee is so excited about the idea of having tiger cubs to raise. When they’re finished with their coffee it’s five thirty and the zoo and cafe will close in half an hour. While Sohee gets changed, Jongin wanders around in the gift shop. He thinks of buying Sohee something from it, but then realises that it probably wouldn’t be very exciting for her to get something from the place she works. When she reappears in jeans and a duffel coat that reaches past her knees, he’s disappointed to see the lion hat has vanished.

“Where’s the lion?” he asks. Sohee blinks at him, and he pats his head.

“Oh, that lion. He lives here with his friends, the monkey and the panda. They take it in turns to help me out on the school group tours.”

Jongin thinks that he might have to become a parent helper again sometime in order to see Sohee wearing a monkey hat and a panda hat. He takes her hand and they walk out to his car. It’s an easy mutual decision to get takeout rather than go to a restaurant, as both of them are tired and grimy from their shifts, and they stop to pick up bibimbap from a small family-owned place he knows where they cook everything from scratch. Back at Sohee’s apartment they shower and eat their bibimbap by candlelight, and afterwards Jongin suggests they rent the new David Attenborough documentary that has just come out. Sohee’s face lights up.

“Oh, yes! I’ve been dying to see that,” she exclaims. Before long they’re snuggled together on the couch, the room dim and lit only by the pair of candles burning low on the dinner table and the glow of the African savannah from the wide TV screen. David Attenborough’s unmistakeable British tones fill the room, and their arms are around each other as they lean together. She’s a warm, reassuring weight against him, and he holds her close and buries his nose into the sandalwood-scented softness of her freshly washed hair. It isn’t even five minutes into the film when the world begins to fade out as the combination of warmth, comfort and serious sleep deprivation pulls him under, but just before sleep takes him he feels a sudden, strange sensation of relief. It’s like all the deeply buried pain and fear suddenly falls away, leaving him clear and true. And he knows.

Here, in Sohee’s arms, Jongin is safe.


	18. February 29th

It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and the morning in the ED has been unusually quiet. Apparently it’s a beautiful day outside, at least according to the staff that come on shift as the morning progresses. The last of the dirty city snow has been washed away by a warm southern breeze that brings the first hint of winter’s end and spring’s beginning. Minseok casts a glance at the double doors that lead to the ambulance bay when Songmi tells him this. He’s not really sure what he’s expecting to see, as the swooping concrete wings of the hospital building and car park block any potential view of the sky or nature. It’s probably the reason why the ED has been so quiet - even people who don’t feel well put off going to hospital on the first nice day in months, and the injuries from Saturday sports games won’t start trickling in until later. When someone comes into the ED on a day like today, it’s usually something serious.

And it is serious. The paramedic makes that clear. Minseok has just finished agreeing with Songmi that it’s a beautiful day, not bothering to mention the fact that he slept in his office again last night and hasn’t actually seen the alleged sunshine for himself, when the radio crackles into life. “Med control, this is ambulance 29, come in.” The radio is just a few steps away and Minseok answers it. “Go ahead, ambulance 29.”

“We’re about ten minutes out with a four-year-old boy. He was found face down in an indoor swimming pool a few minutes ago. He’s intubated and CPR is in progress. At the moment he is unresponsive.” The words are painstakingly controlled and precise.

“Do you have a pulse or a rhythm?” Minseok asks. “Do you know where the parents are?”

“Negative on pulse. Hard to interpret rhythm with CPR ongoing. The father is with us in the ambulance.”

“Copy that. See you in ten.” Minseok hangs up the radio, and for a moment he and Songmi look at each other, saying nothing. Then Songmi takes a deep breath and says, “I’ll put him in bay 1,” and goes to get it ready. Minseok goes to the main desk to ask Aecha to page a respiratory therapist and X-ray tech.

Bay 1 is the station closest to the entrance, and a crash cart where they keep the equipment and medication required for most resuscitations stands against the wall. When Minseok gets back from the main desk, Songmi has torn off the small plastic ring around the latch that seals the cart, removed the intubation and ventilation equipment, and set it near the head of the bed. She’s also set up and hung two IVs. Minseok picks up a small, hard board standing near the wall and lays it on the bed. It’s shaped vaguely like a child, and is meant to make it easier for someone to effectively compress a child’s chest during resuscitation. They cover it with a clean white sheet. Then they go together out to the ambulance entrance where, in the brightness of the sunshine, they listen for the sound of the siren. Minseok turns his face up and closes his eyes to let the sunlight play on his face. Songmi was right. It is a beautiful day, and it is about to be darkened by the patient who is now only six or seven minutes away. Minseok hates drownings for two reasons; one, by the time the patient gets to them it’s almost always too late to do anything, and two, they’re usually young children.

They hear the siren wail down the main highway and then slow as the approaching ambulance turns through the designated entrance lane. The ambulance has barely stopped when the driver jumps out of the cab, runs to the back and opens the rear door. Inside the paramedic is doing single-person CPR. He continues chest compressions while Songmi and Minseok slide the stretcher out the back, lower the wheels to the ground, lock them in place and roll the child into the ED. He’s wearing a pair of small swimming trunks and nothing else, and Songmi wraps a warm blanket around him and takes his core temperature with an electronic probe. Minseok is checking that the endotracheal tube the paramedic has placed into the boy’s windpipe so that they can breathe for him is still in the right place and has not shifted or come out during transport.

“Stop compressions for a moment,” he tells the paramedic. He has to check for a pulse. The paramedic stops and takes a slight step back, and that is the moment when Minseok suddenly stops seeing a patient in front of him and sees a child. He sees a little boy who is blue, whose eyes are closed, who is not breathing, whose heart is not beating, and it’s not the four-year-old drowning victim who is in front of him, it’s a five-year-old boy with Minseok’s eyes and Jangmi’s nose and a mouth that has something of each of them.

The vision lasts less than a second, but it’s a second that hits Minseok like a sledgehammer smashing into the back of his head, and he almost physically staggers. It’s only through years of forcing unwelcome thoughts into the darkest corners of his mind and locking them away that he manages to shut the flashback off. He feels for a brachial, cardioid or femoral pulse, his fingers finding the correct places in the neck, arm and groin with ingrained accuracy. Nothing. He checks the boy’s pupils with his flashlight. They’re equal and dilated on both sides, and do not respond to light. Lastly, he quickly examines the rest of his body for signs of physical injury and finds none. The whole exam from start to finish has taken less than thirty seconds.

As he works, Minseok is aware of the boy’s father refusing Aecha’s invitation to go out the front to register the patient. He sits at the end of the gurney on a chair that Aecha brings for him, and holds the boy’s feet in both his hands, rubbing them as if to warm them. By then, Songmi and another nurse who has come to assist have got the ECG leads in place and Minseok looks at the screen. There’s some artefact from compressing his chest, but no clear sign of any electrical activity in the heart. Minseok asks the paramedic to pause chest compressions again, and the line becomes straight.

“Asystole,” he says. No heartbeat. “What’s his temperature?” It’s a long shot, but people who drown in very cold water can sometimes have a long period of slow and impalpable pulse and still occasionally recover, and it is sometimes worth prolonging resuscitation. The phrase they use in the ED is “you aren’t dead until you’re warm and dead”. But Songmi replies, “36.5”. Just a tiny bit below normal. Minseok looks at the screen again, then back at the boy, and forces himself to see a four-year-old drowning victim and not his five-year-old son.

“Well, maybe it’s fine v-fib. Let’s give it a try. Start at fifty joules.” Songmi nods, and as Minseok picks up the paediatric defibrillator paddles, she begins to charge the machine. “Charging to fifty joules,” she says calmly.

Minseok waits the seconds it takes for the paddles to charge. He sometimes does this when trying to resuscitate children, because he’ll try absolutely anything to resuscitate children, no matter how much of a long shot it is. Only the finest of fine v-fib will be so small that it could be mistaken for asystole. It’s rare in adults and almost unheard of in children. What Minseok is doing is not a considered medical judgement. It’s an excuse to keep trying. They all know the little boy is dead - at least, Minseok, the paramedic, the EMT, Songmi, the respiratory therapist and the rest of the trauma team know. They’ve all seen drowned children before. Minseok can’t say what the father is thinking as he tries to warm his son’s feet in his hands. But Minseok has only had the boy in his care for less than two minutes. He can’t accept what he knows. Pretending that the heart might be in fine v-fib gives him an excuse to keep on trying. So he does.

First he shocks him, twice. Then IV epinephrine. Shocks again. Still no return. He starts amiodarone. Shocks again. Still nothing. Two minutes of chest compressions, then repeat. Fifteen minutes pass, and there is no response. This is where he’s supposed to “re-evaluate the advisability of continuing resuscitation”. That’s the protocol’s way of saying, pull yourself together. If it hasn’t worked by now, nothing will. The patient is dead.

Minseok looks at Songmi, the paramedic, the EMT. He doesn’t need to say it aloud. They already know. He turns to the father. He’s said a few words to him during the resuscitation, explaining what they’re doing and what they hope the medication will do. He’s warned him that the failure to respond is a bad sign. But now they’re beyond bad signs. “Sir,” he says. “I’m so sorry to have to say this, but -”

The father interrupts him. “No,” he says fiercely. “You can’t stop. I know he’s still here. I can feel him. He wants to come back.” As he says it, he looks up at the corner of the ceiling as if he can see the child’s spirit floating up there. He’s crying now, still holding the child’s feet, no longer paying attention to anything but his son.

Minseok looks at Songmi again. Then he says, “Continue CPR.”

He gets a chair and sits down next to the father, who stares at him and continues to cling to the child’s foot. “What happened?” he asks.

“I…don’t know,” he is now rubbing the boy’s foot with both hands as if chafing might awaken him. His words come in fits and starts, almost like he has to cough them out. “He was swimming - I - I was watching him. I don’t know how it happened. One minute he was fine and the next minute he was lying on the bottom of the pool. I jumped in and pulled him out.”

“What happened then?”

“Then…then I started pushing on his chest. Water came out when I did it. I called 119 and kept on pushing on his chest until the ambulance came. He’s going to be alright, isn’t he?” The last sentence bursts from him as if by accident. He had not meant to say it.

Minseok is silent. He knows far too well how this man is feeling, but he cannot, must not let himself empathise. This situation is too close to his own. The seven years between the incidents have vanished, and raw terror and grief and guilt are rattling at the cages he has locked them in. He has ignored them too long, and they are trying to get out. But they must not get out. Minseok cannot risk losing his grip.

“Where is his mother?” he asks. The man blinks a couple of times, and then says, “She’s shopping. She went to the supermarket.”

“Call her,” Minseok tells him, and waits until the man has fumbled a phone from his pocket with the hand not holding the child’s foot before standing up. Songmi has just rotated off chest compressions. She’s the most senior nurse present at the moment, and Minseok takes her aside.

“That man has just had his son drown while he was supposed to be watching him,” he says quietly. “There’s no way he’s going to be able to tell us to stop. So we have a choice. We can stop anyway despite what he says, or we can continue CPR and ventilation until his wife gets here and see if she can make a decision.”

“That’s fine with me,” Songmi says immediately. “Shall we move him to an exam room?”

Minseok nods. They’re starting to get more patients now that the afternoon is wearing on, and they need to free up the trauma bay. He’s aware of Songmi watching him as he goes back towards the gurney, and he knows why. From a strict medical point of view, there’s no point in continuing. He’s using valuable staff time and resources on a dead child, and it’s not like him to shy away from dealing with facts or delivering difficult news. He doesn’t let himself think about that too much either. He tells the father that they’ll continue CPR until his wife gets here and re-evaluate then, and tells the nurse and respiratory tech to move the child to a room. The paramedic and EMT leave, and Minseok sees that several more patients have checked in.

He focuses hard on the patients he sees in the next hour or so, keeps busy, builds walls in his mind. When the child’s mother arrives, she comes to the front desk and asks to see her son. Minseok intercepts her and takes her to his office. He starts to explain the situation and the condition of her son, and before long it’s clear that she gets it. He’s told her what has happened and she knows her son is dead. How she feels about that is somewhere Minseok is not going to go. He explains what they’re doing now, and she nods, then asks to see her husband and child. He takes her to the exam room where Songmi is still directing rotations of chest compressions. She puts a hand on the boy’s forehead and stands there for a while silently. She doesn’t cry. Then she turns to her husband.

“They’ve done all they can,” she says. “He’s not here anymore. It’s time to stop.”

He looks at her, tears in his eyes. Then he nods and stands. He says something, but Minseok can’t quite seem to hear it for the rushing in his ears. He watches as the father finally lets go of his son’s foot. His wife hugs him, then gently leads him from the ED. Minseok knows he will never see them again.

He’s lost track of time, and only realises when Aecha behind the main desk calls his name and asks him in a mock-scolding tone just what he thinks he’s still doing here. He glances at the clock and sees that it’s nearly 6 pm. The number strikes something inside him that the stress of the afternoon has pushed away, and he swears under his breath even as he’s spinning on his heels and running back towards his office where he left his cellphone. Eunbi. He’s forgotten Eunbi.

He doesn’t even stop to change his white coat for his outside jacket, just grabbing his phone, wallet and keys and running outside to find his car. There are six missed calls from his youngest daughter, and a string of messages.

Dad, my lesson is over. I’m waiting outside the music school :) 5:03

You know the place, right? The steps where I waited last time? 5:09

It’s okay if you’re late, I have to study my theory anyway~ 5:12

Dad?????????? 5:24

Um, it’s getting dark so I might have to call mom… 5:31

Mom’s voicemail says she’s in court. I’ll keep waiting. 5:35

I’m going to walk home. I think I know the way. You don’t have to come, it’s okay. 5:45

Minseok swears again as he stabs the call button. It’s dark and Eunbi is only eight and it’s a good five kilometres between her music school and Jangmi’s house, and she’s carrying a cello on her back that’s as nearly as tall as she is. Not good, not good. The phone rings and she answers it just as he’s unlocking his car.

“Dad?”

“Eunbi, sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” he says, overwhelmed with relief that she’s okay and guilt that he’s let her down. “There was an emergency at work and...never mind,” he breaks off. He can’t explain to his eight-year-old daughter and besides, there’s no excuse. Minseok should not have let himself lose track like that. He sank into his work rather than deal with his feelings and now Eunbi has suffered for it. “Where are you?”

“Walking home,” Eunbi sniffs, and Minseok’s heart clenches as he realises she’s crying.

“Which road? I’m in the car now, I’ll be there soon.”

He waits while Eunbi looks at her map app to find the street name. “Is there a store open nearby?” he asks.

“I just passed a convenience store.”

“Okay. I want you to go back and wait in there until I come and get you. It’s not safe for you to be out on the streets when it’s dark.” He waits until she reports that she’s in the store and sitting at one of the plastic tables where people eat the fast food and ramyun they can buy there before apologizing to her again. He sticks his earpiece in as he drives so that he can keep talking to her. He asks how her lesson went, what pieces she’s learning and which one she likes best. By the time he’s pulling up at the edge of the road, ignoring the fact that it’s a no-parking zone, she’s stopped sniffling and is telling him about how her chamber group are going to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D at the violinist’s cousin’s wedding, and the dress she’s going to wear for it, and how mind-numbingly repetitive the cello part of Pachelbel’s Canon in D is.

“I mean, it should be called Canon in Dying,” she’s saying as he crosses the sidewalk and the door of the 7-11 slides open for him, “because the cellists are literally dying of boredom while playing it.”

“I hope they’re not really literally dying,” Minseok grins as he walks up to her where she’s sitting at a plastic table, cello case leaning against the shelf beside the microwaves. She hears his voice and spins around, face lighting up as she jumps up. He opens his arms and hugs her tightly.

“I’m so sorry, princess,” he says for the third time. “I was really late, wasn’t I?”

“It’s okay, dad,” Eunbi smiles up at him sunnily, and Minseok’s heart twists with guilt again. He’d almost rather she was mad at him. He doesn’t deserve such easy forgiveness.

He puts her cello in the back seat of the car, relieved that he hasn’t gotten a ticket in the couple of minutes or so he was illegally parked. Eunbi sits next to him in the front seat and continues to chatter as they drive until her phone starts ringing in her lap. Minseok glances at her as she picks up.

“Hi, mom,” she says, and Minseok’s heart sinks a little. He remembers Eunbi’s message that she’d called Jangmi and gotten voicemail. Had she messaged her mother too? If so, Minseok is going to be in big trouble. His fingers tighten unconsciously around the steering wheel as Eunbi explains that he’s just picked her up and they’re driving home now. The dashboard clock is damning in its LED lights. 6:09. More than an hour later than he should have been.

“Mom says to bring me inside and not just drive off,” Eunbi tells him when she hangs up. It only cements Minseok’s dread. Jangmi is furious, and rightly so. He tries to stay calm as he pulls the car up the driveway. Jangmi is standing in the front doorway, backlit by the golden light from inside falling out across the porch, arms tightly folded across her chest. Minseok can see the tension in her body, and he knows that her lips will be pressed tightly together, eyes blazing.

He follows Eunbi up the path, her cello in his hand. When they get to the steps, Eunbi skips up them, then hesitates as she looks up at her mother. She has just noticed how angry Jangmi is.

“Eunbi, go inside,” Jangmi orders, and Eunbi takes her instrument from Minseok and scuttles meekly inside without a word. Minseok forces himself not to hunch his shoulders. He knows he’s in the wrong, and he’s ready to apologize, but that doesn’t mean he has to cower before his ex-wife. He opens his mouth, but she gets in first.

“I knew it,” Jangmi’s voice is tight and shaking with barely suppressed anger. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted. An hour, Minseok! You left her waiting alone outside for an hour!”

“I know,” Minseok tries to break in. “I -”

“You have no idea how much Eunbi was looking forward to you coming to pick her up,” Jangmi cuts through him. “She talked about it all week and you let her down. What is wrong with you? Why are you so irresponsible? Do you not care about the girls? Because if not, I wish you would just get lost and let us get on with our lives.”

“Of course I care about them!” Minseok finds himself raising his voice too as anger leaps up inside him. “They’re my daughters too!”

“If you truly cared about them, you wouldn’t do things like this. You don’t care about them, Minseok. I put the girls before everything, and you can’t even be bothered to pick them up on time. All you care about is yourself. When it suits you you act like you’re a good dad. You turn up, spoil them so they think you’re wonderful, let them get away with anything so that you get to feel good about them adoring you. Then you disappear into the bloody hospital for weeks on end and break their hearts.”

“That’s not true,” Minseok yells, fury stealing the last vestiges of his calm. “I don’t try to make them adore me! I want to be in their lives because I love them, but you’re so controlling you never give me a chance!”

“I don’t give you a chance?” Jangmi screams. “What do you fucking call today? I didn’t want to let you pick her up while I was in court for this exact reason, but I thought, no, Minseok is really trying now. Maybe I can finally trust him again,” she laughs, loud and bitter. “You’ve just proven to me exactly what you’re made of, Kim Minseok, and that’s not father material.”

Dread twists into his anger. “No, you don’t understand,” he says, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. “I really didn’t mean to be late today - it’s just there was a situation at work -” his voice falters as the memory of the drowned little boy leaps into his mind. He grits his teeth as the association with Ilsung tries to make itself known again. His fists clench unconsciously as he battles with the memory, and Jangmi leaps into the gap.

“Work! Work again!” she screams. “It’s always work with you! You care about nothing else! You never change! You left Eunbi alone on the streets at night so you could work! Just like you were working instead of watching Ilsung and he died!”

Minseok stares at her. It’s not true, his voice of logic tries to tell him. It was an accident. Jangmi was home too, they were both working, he was old enough to play on his own, it was a freak accident...but the guilt that has been locked inside him for seven years is far more powerful than those words. No matter what the facts say, he knows it was his fault. He’s known it all along. It’s his torment, and it will never leave him.

“You bastard,” and now there are tears pouring down her twisted, furious face. “Do you want the same thing to happen to Eunbi? What if something had happened to her? Wasn’t losing Ilsung enough? Must you lose another child to learn your lesson?”

“No,” Minseok tries to say, but the word is choked. “No, I -”

“You were the worst father Ilsung could have had, Kim Minseok,” she says, and her voice is shaking. “You should never have been a father.”

The words are a brutal punch to the gut, knocking him breathless. He feels the blood drain from his face as they stare at each other, both suddenly silent. There is nothing she could have said that would have hurt him more. Somewhere through the emotions that have broken out of their cages and are rampaging through him and destroying him from the inside out, Minseok can see that Jangmi is taken aback at her own words. She knows she went too far. There is the tiniest hint of regret in her eyes. All the same, he knows she won’t apologize, and he couldn’t take it even if she did. He doesn’t want it. She’s right. He was the worst father for Ilsung. He let his child die, and he deserves all the pain she wants to inflict on him.

The space between them is like a knife. They’re both breathing hard. Neither knows what to say. There’s just too much pain.

Eventually Jangmi shakes her head. “Just go, Minseok,” she says, and the words are low and bitter. Minseok looks at her desperately, but he can’t figure out what to say to fix this, and he’s not sure he could speak even if the right words miraculously came. He just stands there, and after a few seconds she turns around and goes back inside the house, closing the door in his face.

He stands there blankly for probably five minutes, and then the sensor light clicks off and startles him by plunging him into sudden darkness. He manages to drag enough shreds of his tattered soul together to make it to the car. Once inside, he starts to drive back towards the hospital almost blindly, navigating the roads on autopilot while a battle rages inside him. He’s not used to feeling so much. He’s gotten so good at locking everything away, and now it’s all burst out and it’s so strong, it’s so horribly strong it’s as if everything only just happened, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s twisting and tearing at him, this monster of guilt-fear-grief, it’s trying to claw its way out of his chest, and his face is contorted, and he hits the steering wheel with his fist, again and again. He feels like he’s on the verge of breaking down, and it’s all too much to bear.

He needs to work. He needs to focus on people, on patients, on cases. He needs to be busy, be rushed off his feet, needs to have ten of his staff trying to get his attention at once, needs to let the suffering of others overtake his own. He needs to work until he’s so tired that he’ll fall into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion the second he lies down on his couch, and then when he wakes up he needs to work again. That’s how he deals with it. That’s how he copes.

He tries to distract himself by thinking of his cases. He tries to go through every patient he saw today, but it’s not working as well as it should. The guilt-fear-grief monster is too strong. It keeps pushing the patients aside and seizing him in its teeth.

He’s walking through the main doors of the hospital. The air is warm and thick with blunt undertones of antiseptic and bleach. He breathes it in. There is someone in front of him and he stops walking and turns his face to them automatically, but it takes several seconds too long for him to actually process the visual input and turn it into meaning. A mouth is moving, and what started off as incomprehensible sounds slowly turn into words.

“...kids there on Saturday. Would that work for you?” Jongdae says. Minseok fumbles for the threads of the conversation, but he didn’t hear enough to be able to fill in the blanks.

“Sorry, what?” he says hollowly. Jongdae looks at him, and Minseok registers the concern that spreads across his face.

“Are you okay?”

Minseok nods, but Jongdae has obviously come to his own conclusion. He takes Minseok’s arm and leads him towards the cafeteria, which is nearly empty. It must be getting late, because the cafeteria staff are starting to put the chairs up on the tables so they can sweep and mop. The lady behind the serving counter looks at them disapprovingly as she stacks large metal dishes, but Jongdae gives her his sweet smile and assures her that they’re not here to eat, just to sit for five minutes or so, and the disapproving look changes to a reluctant smile in the face of Jongdae’s charm. She nods them towards a table near the wall on the other side of the cafeteria.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Jongdae asks when they’re sitting opposite each other. He looks worried, and Minseok suddenly remembers the last time he saw Jongdae a couple of weeks ago, pale and haggard, dealing with all the aftermath of Baekhyun’s crisis on his own, and telling Minseok he was fine despite obviously not being fine at all.

“Is it that obvious?” he asks with an attempt at a smile. It’s more to give him a chance to gather his thoughts than because he actually needs to know.

“You were completely spaced out and looking like you’d seen a ghost, so yeah,” Jongdae says. He smiles, but his eyes are still tight with worry. Minseok feels faintly embarrassed. He’s not usually in this situation. He doesn’t have many close friends and he certainly doesn’t open up even to the ones he does have, but there’s something about Jongdae. He has an indefinable air of compassion that makes Minseok want to trust him. In all honesty, he’s reached a point where he just doesn’t know where to turn anymore, and though he wouldn’t have sought help on his own, it feels like the ob-gyn has just thrown him a lifebelt.

“I think I’ve lost the girls,” he says, and as he says the words it hits him all over again.

“What?” Jongdae stares at him. “What do you mean?”

“I was supposed to pick Eunbi up from her music lesson today, but something happened in the ED and I lost track of time. I was an hour late. Jangmi was furious. She’s right to be. It was a terrible thing to do.” Minseok can’t look at the other man. He leans back in his chair and stares blankly at the wall. “She said I’m not father material, that I can’t be trusted,” he hears his words, distant, almost on a monotone. They don’t reflect the torment inside him. “She said I should never have been a father, and she’s right.”

“Minseok,” Jongdae says, “that’s not true. You made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be a father. I know you love your daughters.”

Minseok looks back at his friend unhappily. “I do love them and I don’t want to lose them, but I think I’ve really blown it,” he says. “Jangmi gave me a chance because I promised I would go to therapy, but I only went to that one session. I told myself I’d be a good dad for them without the therapy, but I failed.”

“Why didn’t you keep going with the therapy?” Jongdae asks.

Minseok finds himself biting his lip. He forces himself to breathe. “I...I had a flashback. I hadn’t had one in years. Talking about it...even thinking about talking about it...it was too much. Too overwhelming. I guess...I was scared,” he admits. “But I should have gone anyway. Now she’ll never trust me again.”

Jongdae is quiet for a few moments, and Minseok stares back at the wall and focuses on holding himself together. Jongdae probably doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but he really can’t explain and keep what little composure he still has, and it’s not fair to burden Jongdae with him breaking down. They’ve naturally clicked since they met and Minseok well is on the road to considering Jongdae a good friend, but all the same.

“I can’t speak for your ex-wife,” Jongdae says eventually, “but I think you should keep trying. You haven’t lost them yet. You haven’t lost them until the court order is signed.” He leans forward over the table as Minseok looks back at him, and their eyes meet. Jongdae’s face is set, and he speaks with quiet intensity. “If there’s even the tiniest, remotest chance that you can keep being a father to your girls, Minseok, you take it. You hang onto it and never let go. Go back to therapy. Take time off work and go intensively if you have to. Do anything. Do everything. Prove to Jangmi that this incident taught you something, and that you’ll never look back. You are Nayoung and Eunbi’s father, and they love you. If they lose you, they will lose a part of their life that is irreplaceable. You must do everything you can.”

The words strike deep into Minseok. He can see clearly that Jongdae would go to hell and back for his kids, and if Jongdae would do it, so can Minseok. If not for his own sake, he can do it for Nayoung and Eunbi, so that they will not lose their father.

“You’re right,” he says. “You’re right. I have to do everything.” As the words leave him, so does just a tiny bit of the torment inside him. He’s not completely powerless, after all. He’s made a terrible mistake, but this time, there’s the faintest hope that he might be able to fix it.

“Call your therapist right now,” Jongdae says. “Leave a message. Ask for the earliest possible appointment. This is your priority now. Make everything else fit around it.”

He nods. He gets out his phone and calls Wu Yifan’s office. He leaves a message on the answerphone like Jongdae told him, asking for an appointment as soon as possible even though he’s meant to be working all day tomorrow. The ED will just have to do without him for once. He hangs up and lets out a shaky breath, and Jongdae reaches across the table to put a hand on his forearm.

“Thank you,” Minseok says, and Jongdae smiles at him. There’s something like relief in his eyes, and Minseok suddenly wonders if Jongdae is thinking of Baekhyun, the friend who slipped so far he’d nearly lost him.

“Anytime, Minseok,” Jongdae says. “I mean it.”

\---

The crisp night air surrounds him as he steps out of the main entrance. It’s still cold even though spring is right around the corner, and Kyungsoo pops the collar on his jacket and hunches his shoulders as he walks towards the subway entrance near the hospital. He’s longing for his bed and the dark curtains in his bedroom after a long couple of weeks of nothing but work and more work. Everything has been so chaotic ever since Dr. Hwang left for another job and for some reason, the chief has decided that Kyungsoo must be part of the new hiring board. That means that when he’s off work he has to read applications and prepare for interviews and when he’s not doing that he’s on call. His mother has called him repeatedly throughout the week as well, asking him to come home for dinner, but Kyungsoo just can’t deal with the expectations of relationships and job positions she can brag about. He rubs his eyes, smudging his glasses in the process, but he doesn’t care. All he wants is to get home and get some sleep.

His feet take him down the streets and down the stairs until he’s surrounded by artificial lighting and a myriad of people. The subway entrance is extraordinarily busy because not only is it the closest public transportation stop to the hospital, it also leads out into the great Hangang Park where people meet and hang about at all times of the year. Kyungsoo sighs and starts to weave his way through the people, bumping into a few but not bothering to apologize. When he finally reaches the platform from which his train departs, his phone starts ringing. Please be mom, please be mom, he begs silently. Not that Kyungsoo has any real desire to talk to his mother, but if it isn’t her, it’s the hospital, and that means he won’t get to go home and sleep. He can’t just ignore the hospital calling like he can his mother. His fingers are stiff and cold, and when he fumbles his phone from his pocket and sees the emergency department number on the screen, his heart sinks.

“Yes?” he asks. He probably comes off as rude, but Kyungsoo can’t be bothered with his manners right now. God, sleep would be so good. He barely listens to the ED resident as they relay their patient details to him and ask for a CT scan of both thorax and abdomen with contrast. There’s a brief pause when they’re finished before Kyungsoo realises it’s his turn to speak.

“Okay, yeah, sure.” He sounds defeated, and as the ED resident hangs up with a cheery ‘thank you’, Kyungsoo slowly turns around and makes his way back the way he came, feeling a little like a zombie. Five minutes later, he’s knocking on the door to the CT scanner to get eye contact with Jinsoo who’s about to position a patient in the scanner.

“Got a new patient for us, Dr. Do?” she asks.

Kyungsoo nods. “Someone named Hwang or Hong or something like that.” It’s a little embarrassing to forget the name of the patient, but he’s just so tired.

Jinsoo smiles at him. “No worries, found him. With or without contrast?” she asks as she swiftly schedules the patient. Kyungsoo shrugs, and Jinsoo raises an eyebrow.

“You need to make a decision.”

“With,” Kyungsoo says, and stifles a yawn as he leaves Jinsoo to continue her work. His office is dark and comforting and Kyungsoo sinks into his office chair. His position is not exactly comfortable but he's too tired to care. He yawns again and slouches even further, almost sliding off it. With closed eyes he counts the seconds until he reaches thirty, then forces himself to sit up and turn on his computer. As the machine hums to life, Kyungsoo decides to open the door to his office slightly, just enough to let in some actual light. Otherwise he might really fall asleep.

He gets busy with a few of the X-rays that are new and starts running through dislocated ankles, broken wrists and a couple of lungs with pneumonia. It’s a knock on his open door that forces him away from the screen. Jinsoo sends him a small smile.

“Would you mind coming and looking at the CT imaging? There’s definitely something going on there and I want to make sure you don’t need anything else from me before we move him back to the ED,” she says and vanishes again when he nods. She's scrolling through the CT images when Kyungsoo arrives beside her and it doesn’t take more than a few moments before he sees what’s wrong.

“He’s ruptured his spleen. What did the referral say?”

Jinsoo turns to her computer and finds the referral. In big capital letters it says SUSPECTED PNEUMOTHORAX. Well, it is obviously not that. It further states the patient fell from scaffolding six days ago and is experiencing difficulty breathing. Kyungsoo looks over the scan again. No wonder, he thinks. It looks like there’s at least a liter of blood in his chest cavity crowding the lungs, and another liter, if not more, in his abdomen from his ruptured spleen. This guy was walking around with a ruptured spleen for six days with only complaints of trouble breathing on day six? Kyungsoo wouldn’t have believed it if it wasn’t right in front of him.

“We’re done,” he tells Jinsoo. He sits down on the chair she vacates as she helps the patient back to his bed and asks the orderly to transport him back down to the ED. No collapsed lung, but the bleeding has to be dealt with, and rather quickly. Kyungsoo fishes in his pocket for his phone, comes up empty, and remembers he left it in his office. Damn. Hopefully nobody has called him in the few minutes he’s been reading the CT scan.

His phone, thankfully, shows no missed calls, and he rubs his thumb down the edge of the case as he debates whether to call the resident or the attending ED physician. The resident is likely to call the attending either way, so Kyungsoo could skip the step and go directly to the attending, but he risks whoever is attending in the ED this evening not having heard of the patient. Kyungsoo sighs and calls the resident. He sounds utterly astonished at the find, but Kyungsoo can’t be bothered with his surprise. Not right now. His job is to get the diagnosis to the right person and that’s what he’s done.

When the CT has been described and he has finished with the X-rays he started earlier, Kyungsoo stands up and stretches. He can finally leave for home again. The exhaustion that had momentarily left him with the spleen rupture slowly returns and clouds his thoughts in a fog, and he yawns as he leaves the radiology department for the second time. Just like earlier, the crisp air hits his skin and makes it tingle. The sun has set now, street lights lighting the way to the subway station and people milling about. Closer to the river is a band setting up for busking and food carts start setting up for the annual food festival. Kyungsoo feels his eyelids shut halfway and every step towards the subway feels heavier and heavier. He’s just set his foot on the first step down when his phone starts ringing. Please, God, not the hospital, he begs silently, but his prayer goes unanswered. It’s the attending physician in the intensive care unit.

“Do Kyungsoo, on-call radiologist,” he answers. The doctor on the other end greets him with a cheerful voice. How can any attending sound so happy to be at work tonight?

“An angio?” he asks when she relays her request. It’s the same patient with the spleen rupture, but they want an angiogram now. Still, he can’t deny that with that amount of internal bleeding, this request makes sense. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Will you call the X-ray tech to make sure it’s coordinated?”

He hangs up after another thirty seconds of discussing and turns around on the spot. A couple of businessmen in suits rush past him on their way home and Kyungsoo wishes he was doing the same. The route back to the hospital seems dreadfully long, but he makes it eventually, the same warm air from the reception making him shiver as he once again makes his way towards the elevators and his department. He should probably get a cup of coffee when he gets there, just to make sure he’s awake to read the scan when it’s been performed. Kyungsoo finds Jinsoo in the break room making tea.

“Is the patient arriving?” he asks. She shakes her head.

“They wanted to get a central line in and do an ABG first.” She sends him a sympathetic glance. “You definitely have time for coffee before they get here.”

Kyungsoo nods. The coffee in the pot is lukewarm, but caffeine is caffeine no matter what and he can’t be bothered to make a new pot. The ICU personnel call Jinsoo and ask if she’s ready for them, and Kyungsoo trails her to the scanning room. She sits down and pulls patient information onto her screen.

“What kind of angio?” she asks him. “A full aorta? Just abdomen?”

Kyungsoo swallows a mouthful of lukewarm coffee.

“Just abdomen, that’s fine. We might have to do a delayed phase as well.”

The ICU nurse and the intensivist Kyungsoo spoke to on the phone to arrive, along with the patient. The intensivist is smiling and joking with the patient as they move him onto the CT bed once again. Jinsoo does her work and Kyungsoo falls onto one of the chairs in front of the CT scanner. He’ll have to be here to read the scan anyway so he might as well just stay for the duration of it. When the patient is ready, they all leave him alone on the bed.

“It’s incredible he’s so haemodynamically stable,” says the intensivist. Kyungsoo isn’t sure they’ve ever met before. There are so many doctors in this hospital. He turns around to look at her. She’s still smiling, long black hair in a high messy bun and glasses resting on her nose bridge. “I don’t think we’ve met,” she says before Kyungsoo can speak. He takes the hand offered and sends her a smile that feels a little strained with exhaustion.

“Do Kyungsoo,” he says as Jinsoo continues her work in the background, chatting with the nurse.

“I’m Lee Eunsook,” the intensivist says, and lets go of Kyungsoo’s hand. She turns around and stares through the small glass window to make sure her patient stays stable. Kyungsoo follows her line of sight.

“Incredible to go six days with a ruptured spleen,” he says.

Eunsook turns to look at him.

“What do you mean six days?”

Kyungsoo blinks. “My referral said it was six days ago he fell from the scaffolding.”

Eunsook laughs and shakes her head. “No way he’d survive six days with a bleed like that,” she chuckles. “He fell yesterday.”

Kyungsoo scowls. The useless resident in the ED has given him the wrong information and made him look stupid in front of the intensivist. They’re pretty lucky he was so tired earlier that he didn’t put up a fight on the first CT scan. Without it, they wouldn’t have found the rupture and the patient could have gone downhill very fast. He’s interrupted from his brooding thoughts by Jinsoo.

“Want a delayed phase?” she asks and he realises the angio is completed on the screen. Looking through it quickly he decides they might as well, with the patient in the scanner, positioned and ready. He’s not bleeding actively anymore so they have time. He waves Eunsook over and points to a small area on the spleen that’s showing clear contrast.

“It’s likely a haematoma, but it could be a small controlled bleed as well. Either way, he’s not bleeding actively into his abdomen right now,” he says. The delayed phase doesn’t show any new discoveries and Eunsook nods.

“Let’s start by draining the blood in his lung,” she tells the nurse, then thanks Kyungsoo for helping out. Within minutes they’re all leaving the CT scanner and the area quiets down. Jinsoo leaves when she’s done cleaning, and Kyungsoo removes himself from in front of the scanner to describe the findings on his own computer.

When everything is finally done he leaves the hospital for the third time. The February air is colder than ever, the park is lively with the busking band and the food festival and there’s laughter and joy soaring towards the sky. Kyungsoo counts his steps towards the subway station, just to make sure he actually gets there. His foot hovers over the first step, waiting for the oh-so-well known ringtone of his phone but it doesn’t come. When he’s been standing there for a couple of seconds, he sets his foot down. His phone stays silent. Kyungsoo dares take another step down the stairs and his phone continues to stay silent. This is going well, he thinks, and cautiously speeds up his pace. He might actually get onto the subway this time. It’s already there, doors opening as Kyungsoo steps off the stairs and hurries across the platform to catch it. The second the doors slide closed behind him a familiar ringtone sounds from his pocket. Kyungsoo wants to cry. He doesn’t, but he wants to. He just wants to go home. Why is the universe so against that? He pulls out his phone and looks at the screen. The number isn’t in his contacts, and it’s not a hospital number either.

“Hello?” he asks cautiously.

“Is that Kyungsoo?” The voice sounds a little uncertain, yet oddly familiar. “It’s Yifan, Wu Yifan. Remember me?”

Kyungsoo nearly drops his phone. He regrips it, then shuffles through people until he finds a slightly quieter spot to stand. “Of course I remember you, dumbass." He finds himself grinning as he speaks, and Yifan laughs down the phone line.

Yifan asks if he wants to get chicken and beer at a nearby street bar, and Kyungsoo agrees before he really realises what he’s doing. He feels taken aback at his own spontanaeity when he hangs up, and nerves start to crawl through him at the thought of hanging out with someone he hasn’t been in contact with for nearly six years. He gets off at the next stop and sees the tall hospital building towering in the middle distance. So much for going home to sleep.

Yifan stands just as tall and intimidating as he did on the day they started med school, but he breaks into a smile at the sight of Kyungsoo. They’re an odd pair, the two of them, as they walk to the street bar.

“I can’t drink, I’m on call,” Kyungsoo explains when they sit at their plastic table. Yifan shrugs and orders a beer for himself and a soda for Kyungsoo. When their food arrives they turn to look at each other. Wow, it’s been a long time, their faces say, but neither of them voice it aloud.

“So, how’s it going?” Yifan asks, and Kyungsoo shrugs.

“Fine, I guess. I just finished Assassin’s Creed II for a second time.”

Yifan laughs. “Only the second time? Come on, you can do better than that!” He nudges Kyungsoo’s shoulder and the smaller man almost topples off his chair. Kyungsoo scowls at him but Yifan doesn’t care.

“What about you? Got a wife and kids?” Kyungsoo asks. A strange expression flits across Yifan’s face, but Kyungsoo in his sleep-muddled state can't identify it.

“Nope,” he says, popping his p, and thanks the waitress that arrives with their food. “Sexy, free and single, that’s me.”

Kyungsoo tries - and probably fails - to hide his surprise. He’d been beginning to think everyone else in the world was either in a relationship or wanting to be. He finds himself warming up to Yifan again. He’d forgotten how easily they’d gotten along. Despite outer appearances, their personalities seem to match.

“What about you?” Yifan asks.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “I’m single too,” he says, and for the first time in months, he doesn’t feel a curl of guilt in him at the words. Yifan grins at him and launches into talk of the old days, when they’d spend all day studying and all night gaming in Yifan’s bachelor pad, eating pizza on the floor and forgetting what the sun looked like. They discuss new video games, Yifan swearing that Kyungsoo must try The Witcher 3, while Kyungsoo stands stubbornly on his opinion that nothing gets better than Crusader Kings 3. As time goes by and chicken gets devoured, Kyungsoo’s weariness fades and he isn’t nearly as sleepy as when he got off work. He has almost forgotten he’s on-call when an obnoxious loud ringing penetrates the entire street bar.

“Damn,” he mumbles and fishes his phone up so he can turn off the alarm. “That’s a trauma. Gotta go.”

“Okay, man. Be careful, it’s a jungle out there,” Yifan grins at him, and Kyungsoo rolls his eyes.

“I’m a radiologist, we’re indestructible. Get home safely.” He puts some money on the table to cover what he had, then takes a deep breath and mumbles, “Thanks for calling me. We should hang out again soon,” before spinning around and hurrying off before Yifan can answer. His cheeks are flushing at his own awkwardness, but as he approaches the hospital yet again, he finds himself happier than he can remember feeling for a long time.


	19. March 8th

Yixing and Songmi’s story has always been something of a hospital fairytale. The tale of the handsome oncologist and the beautiful ED nurse, brought together by the stars of destiny - or at least, that’s how Dr. Yun Boyoung tells it, though personally, Yixing highly doubts the exchange program between Hangang University Hospital and Nanjing University Hospital is written in the stars. He smiles vaguely as his third-year resident relates the tale to a pair of fascinated medical students. He’s not embarrassed by their story being shared any more, though he was at first. The years of retelling have immuned him, and he certainly has nothing to be ashamed of. He and Songmi are perfect together, and if everyone knows it, what’s the problem? Likewise, Boyoung isn’t at all fazed by him wandering into the oncology workspace with an armful of files and journals midway though her story, though the two med students gasp and sit up straighter. She just sends him a playful wink and keeps going, which has the dimple in Yixing's cheek deepening as he dumps his armful on the table and starts putting everything back where it belongs.

“I’ll do that, Dr. Zhang.” The second-year resident, who has already heard the story far too many times, offers to take over Yixing’s task, but Yixing just smiles, shakes his head and points her back to her computer. He knows Minhee is preparing an important paper, and Yixing doesn’t mind tidying up after himself, though he knows many doctors of his stature would take advantage of having junior staff around and make them do it.

He’s a little distracted as he shelves journals. Last month Songmi’s sister was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. It has been identified as the cause of her several miscarriages, and because they’re also trying for children, he and Songmi had decided to check she didn’t have the same condition. They’d visited the fertility clinic a few days ago and this afternoon is their follow-up to get the results. He’s not really worried, because although PCOS does sometimes run in families, it’s not always the case by any means and Songmi doesn’t have any signs or symptoms. All the same, he’ll be glad when they know the test results, so they can stop wondering.

He finishes tidying up at about the same time as Dr. Yun finishes her story, and feels the eyes of the med students on him as he leaves. Hopefully soon, he’ll be able to populate the hospital fairytale with its next chapter - their first child. He picks up a tired-looking Songmi from the ED and presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head, ignoring her protest that her hair is gross from working all day. They’ve brought the car today so it’s easier to go directly to the appointment from work, and Yixing turns the radio on low, then glances across at his wife.

“Are you nervous?” he asks.

“Not really,” Songmi says. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have it, but it’s good to check. And even if I do, there are so many options for treatment these days. My sister’s going to do IVF.”

Yixing nods, though even the mention of fertility treatment has his heart sinking a little. He knows that fertility treatment is much harder for women, as they have to take the hormones. He doesn’t want Songmi to go through that. He wants everything to be okay, to be perfect, just like every other aspect of their lives together has been perfect. And it will be okay. They’re the fairytale couple. Everything works out for them.

Half an hour later, they’re staring with twin shell-shocked expressions at the specialist. The fairytale has just ended. Yixing feels Songmi’s hand creep into his, and he’s suddenly, forcefully reminded of all the times he’s delivered bad news to his own patients. He’s always been an empathetic person, too empathetic, even, but being on this side of the news is worse than he’d ever understood. He feels like a ton of bricks has just been dropped over his head. He shakes himself a little, trying to pull himself together. This isn’t the same at all. It’s not a cancer diagnosis, and neither of them are going to die, but somehow, to Yixing, it feels almost as bad.

“Could you explain exactly what this means?” Songmi asks the specialist when the silence goes on a little too long. Yixing hasn’t managed to speak. He should be the one asking, but his throat seems to have locked itself tight. He should be the one, because as it turns out, Songmi doesn’t have PCOS. It’s Yixing who is the problem. The sperm count he agreed to take as part of the routine tests all couples who come to the fertility clinic take has come back at zero.

He listens as the specialist explains exactly what azoospermia is and what their options for proceeding are. He already knows the basics, of course, but it’s been a while since he thought about infertility, not since he was a student in fact. It’s not part of his specialty and not part of Songmi’s, either. He tries not to feel like the world has just ended, because objectively he knows it hasn’t. Neither of them are sick. They may still be able to have a child through IVF. But it’s hard to look at it objectively. Yixing had never even dreamed that he might be the problem. Now that he thinks about that, it was a stupid and biased thing to assume. Men are just as likely to be infertile as women. He just...never thought of it.

Songmi’s hand is still in his. She’s asking all the right questions, and collecting a small pile of brochures in her lap while Yixing just sits here like a statue. He turns his head to look at her, and feeling his gaze, she looks back at him and sends him a gentle smile, her hand squeezing his fingers. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but if the concern in her eyes is anything to go by, it’s probably not good.

She doesn’t let go of his hand as they leave the clinic, the brochures about IVF safely tucked away in her purse. Yixing doesn’t know what to say, and it’s not until they’re standing beside the car and he realises he has to unlock it before they can get in that he starts to come back to himself.

“Shall I drive?” Songmi asks, holding out her hand for the keys. Yixing shakes his head and forces a smile.

“No, it’s fine,” he says. He unlocks the car and they get in, and once they’re safely out of the public eye Songmi leans over and wraps her arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” Yixing says. It wasn’t actually what he intended to say, but somehow the apology comes out before anything else, and his voice sounds a little broken. “I - I never thought it would be my -”

“Zhang Yixing, if you dare to utter the words _my fault_ , I am going to smack you until you come back to your senses,” Songmi tells him. Her voice is fierce and her arms tighten around him, and a laugh escapes him, but it comes out more like a sob.

“At least you’re fine,” he whispers, pulling her a little closer. “I’m glad for that.”

“Darling, this isn’t the end of the world,” Songmi tells him. She pulls back so that she can look at him. “They said we can try IVF. Lots of people have success with that.”

Yixing can’t reply. He starts the car and begins to drive out of the car park. It had been sunny earlier, but now, as if in commiseration with his feelings, the darkening sky above them opens and rain begins to pour down. He turns on the lights and wipers, then indicates and pulls onto the main road as Songmi continues to talk about the IVF process. He nods along, barely hearing her. He does know what IVF entails.

“IVF will be hard on you,” he says after a while. “The hormone treatments will be hard. The extraction and implantation will be hard.” He would be hanging his head if he didn’t have to concentrate on driving in the wet conditions. Guilt presses down on him at the thought of Songmi having to suffer for his failure.

“It doesn’t matter,” Songmi shakes her head. “It won’t be so bad. It’s just a few hormones, babe. You think I’d get through pregnancy without suffering? Hormones are going to be everywhere!” she grins, and Yixing tries, he really tries to smile back.

“It seems so unfair,” he says. “It’s my fau - I mean, my problem,” he amends hastily when she shoots a look at him, “but you’re the one who has to suffer.”

“All good things are worth fighting for,” Songmi says. “I’m one hundred percent willing to do this, Yixing, if you are.”

Yixing is silent. He wants a child, he wants one so badly, but this has shocked him so much and right now he can’t make this decision. He’s not as clear as Songmi seems to be about it. She’s already determined, but he needs to process what he’s been told and think about all the implications. This is why he always tells his oncology patients to take a few days to think about treatment before coming to a decision. He can’t balance his logic and his emotions right now, and he can’t get a grip on his swirling thoughts. They tell him that he’s a failure. He’s failed as a man, and he’s failed Songmi by being unable to give her children in a natural way. He knows this isn’t a healthy thing to think, but it’s there, and he needs to be calm and quiet and find a way to process it and organize his thoughts. He can’t do that while he’s upset.

He pulls to a stop at a red light, one car between them and the pedestrian crossing, which people start to hurry across with umbrellas held over their heads. Through the swishing of the windscreen wipers Yixing sees that the back windscreen of the car in front of him has a bright yellow diamond-shaped sticker in it. BABY ON BOARD, it says, and Yixing feels like someone has just sunk claws into his heart. Will there ever be a sign like that on the back of his car? His eyes flick automatically up to the rear-vision mirror.

The car behind them is coming up fast, way too fast to stop in time. It’s going to hit them. His mind jumps into hyperdrive. He thinks of taking his foot off the brake to lessen the impact and let the car roll forward with it, but the BABY ON BOARD sign flashes before him and no, he cannot allow his car to hit the car ahead of him. He stamps as hard as he can on the brake, jerks the wheel so that if the car does roll it will hopefully divert to the side and avoid the car with its precious burden ahead of him, and flings out his arm across Songmi’s chest in an instinctive attempt to hold her safe.

BANG! They both jerk forwards against their seatbelts. Songmi screams. A bolt of adrenaline shoots through Yixing as the car rocks against the brake. His arm is still across her chest and his heart pounds. But it’s okay. Their car hasn’t hit the one in front, and the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as he feared.

“Oh my God,” Songmi gasps. She twists around in her seat to look through the back at the car which has just rear-ended them.

“Are you okay?” Yixing asks. He sounds much calmer than he feels. He knows she didn’t jerk far forward enough to hit anything, because his arm was across her, but the split-second panic of seeing the car racing up in the rear-vision mirror is still with him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she turns back around and looks at him, eyes huge. “What about you? Did you hit anything? The seatbelt didn’t cut you?”

Yixing knows why she’s asking this. Because of his haemophilia, getting cut for him is much more serious than it is for most people. He doesn't have enough clotting factor proteins in his blood. If he bleeds, his blood cannot clot, and the bleeding will not stop.

“I don’t think so,” he says, “but you better check.” He unclips his seatbelt and turns to face her fully, letting her pull down his sweater collar and examine his collarbone and neck where the seatbelt presses for any cuts. She inspects his skin, then takes his hands and turns them over, making sure he hasn’t scraped them on anything. She shakes her head.

“You’re good,” she says.

“I better go and talk to the driver,” Yixing says. He gets out of the car and walks up to the car behind them. The icy rain pours down on his head and shoulders, flattening his hair as he hurries up to knock on the driver’s window. It rolls down and a terrified-looking young girl peers up at him. She looks barely old enough to be driving.

“I’m so sorry,” she babbles before Yixing can even get a word in. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what happened -”

“Are you hurt?” Yixing interrupts gently, though he can’t see any injuries on her. She pauses, then shakes her head. “Okay, don’t worry. It was just a small accident, nobody got hurt. We’ll get it sorted out. Here,” he passes his card through the window and she takes it. “Pull over to the side of the road so we’re out of the way of the traffic,” he tells her, and jogs back to his car to do the same.

“Just a kid,” he shakes his dripping head as Songmi looks at him enquiringly.

Once the cars are on the verge, he gets out again and finds himself having to explain how the insurance is going to work to the young driver, who has obviously never been in this situation before. He has a quick look at the bumpers where their cars hit, but the impact was so light it has only scratched his paintwork, and hers appears unharmed, so he reassures her that it’s likely to be a cheap repair. He thinks about cautioning her to pay more attention to the roads in future, but decides against it. She’s obviously already repentant, apologizing to him over and over, and he gets the feeling she’ll be more careful without him having to tell her.

By the time he gets back into his car again he’s soaked to the skin and shivering. Songmi shakes her head and unclips her seatbelt to half-climb into the back and haul out the old blanket they keep there, which Yixing uses to dry his face and rub the worst of the wetness from his hair.

“I should have brought an umbrella,” she sighs. “I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

“You didn’t know we’d get rear-ended and I’d have to go out in it, either,” Yixing points out. He waits until she’s belted in before driving into traffic again. It was only a tiny accident, but it’s suddenly brought home to him just how easy it would be to get in a worse one. People die in car accidents all the time, he knows that, but this is the first time he’s ever been in one himself.

Songmi turns up the heater, then puts the radio on as they drive towards home. She fiddles with the radio stations for several minutes before settling on one that’s playing old classic hits. Yixing knows why. It’s her comfort music. He creeps a hand across to her, and she takes it, warm and dry against his clammy skin. After a while she starts to sing along, which makes him smile. He joins her for a couple of songs he knows, but after ten minutes or so have gone by he has to stop singing and focus a little harder on driving. The rain is slowing to a drizzle, so it’s easier to drive, but he’s starting to feel a little unwell. He takes his hand back from Songmi to put both on the wheel. She looks at him.

“You okay?” she asks. Yixing nods distractedly and takes a deep breath. Then another. He’s not sure what it is, but he doesn’t feel quite right somehow. Is he getting sick? he wonders vaguely. Or maybe he’s chilled from getting soaked. He drives silently for another few minutes, hoping the weird feeling will go away, but it doesn’t. In fact, it starts to get worse. He blinks hard and shakes his head a little.

“Hon, you’re breathing a bit too rapidly there,” Songmi says, sounding a little worried. Yixing realises that she’s right. His respiration rate has increased, going shallow and rapid. He tries to slow his breathing down to normal, but he’s starting to feel pretty bad and his body is reluctant to obey him. It wants to hyperventilate. He flicks the indicator on and pulls the car over to the side of the road, where he leans his forehead against the steering wheel and tries to breathe right. He’s nauseous and dizzy, and he’s becoming aware of a strange, dull pain across his abdomen, right under his seatbelt.

“Yixing? Talk to me,” Songmi demands, her voice sharp.

“Babe, can you take my pulse?” Yixing asks her. She immediately leans over and places her fingers expertly to the carotid artery in his neck and watches the timer on her phone. Fifteen seconds is enough, and she takes her fingers away.

“128.” She’s done the math in her head. He hears the alarm in her voice. It’s way too fast for someone simply sitting in a car seat, shock-fast, and they both know it. “What -”

“I think I’m having a bleed,” Yixing whispers. He turns his head to look at her. “It must be from the seatbelt. My haemophilia -”

She understands immediately. She goes pale, but her years of ED nursing experience take over, and she replies calmly. “Okay, we’re going to the hospital. Switch places with me - it’ll be faster if I drive you straight there, paramedics can’t give you clotting factor -” she’s already unclipping her seatbelt as she talks, then his. She gets out and runs around the front to open his door and help him get out of the car. He stumbles around to the passenger side, leaning heavily on her as his vision swims. He’s trying not to freak out, but he knows he’s in serious trouble. He flops into the seat and Songmi rushes back around to the driver’s side and hauls the car into a screaming u-turn.

Yixing is sweating cold now. With shaking hands he pulls his damp jersey and shirt up. As he’d feared, there is a band of dark purple bruising staining his lower abdomen, right where the seatbelt was. Songmi glances over and her lips tighten. It confirms the internal bleed.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you some clotting factor and fluids and you’ll be fine, so stay with me, okay?”

It’s her professional voice, professional words, but he knows her, he can hear the fear in them. She knows exactly how bad this is, and Yixing knows too. He has an uncontrolled bleed into his abdomen and he is going into hypovolaemic shock. If he doesn’t get clotting factor, blood transfusions and surgery to fix whatever part of him is bleeding pretty soon, he’s going to die.

“Yixing, talk to me.” Songmi sounds tense.

“Stupid - of me,” Yixing pants through his over-rapid breathing. “I never thought - it was such a small impact - ”

“I didn’t think of it either,” Songmi says. “I only thought of external bleeding. It was no harder than bumping into someone.”

Yixing guesses that the impact must have concentrated over the small area of the seatbelt, and because his haemophilia makes him bleed so much more easily than most people, it had been enough to rupture something. He tries to say this to Songmi, but it comes out in a confused mumble. His pulse is hammering in his ears, way too fast. He closes his eyes, but Songmi tells him firmly to open them. When he doesn’t, she switches to accented Mandarin Chinese.

“Yixing, open your eyes,” she tells him. He finds a slight smile come to his lips despite how terrible he feels. He cracks his eyes open to find her glancing repeatedly between him and the road. It’s easier to think in Mandarin right now. Changsha dialect would be easiest, but Songmi doesn't know enough of it to be conversational.

“We’re nearly there,” she tells him. “Just stay with me for a little longer, okay?”

“Not going anywhere,” he whispers.

“That’s right, you’re staying with me,” she says. She keeps talking to him even when he can’t really answer beyond murmured monosyllables, intermixing Korean into her Mandarin when she can’t find the right words. Yixing feels a strange urge to giggle at how funny it sounds, but the laughter doesn't quite make it to his lips. He hears Songmi speaking in Korean again and realises that she’s on the phone now, probably to the ED staff.

They’re waiting for them outside when Songmi drives up. Yixing probably knows them, but he’s too blurry to focus on who they are. They get him out of the car and lift him onto a gurney, and then it’s all rushing ceiling and faces and bright lights and the oxygen mask over his face and the prick of multiple IV lines, and Songmi’s voice explaining that he’s a type A haemophiliac and ordering recombinant factor VIII, and someone else telling him they’re taking him for emergency surgery. Yixing hasn’t had surgery since he was twelve and nearly died of a bleed having his tonsils out. Fear seizes him. He's going to die. He reaches out a hand, reaching for Songmi, but he cannot find her. He calls her name desperately, and then he cannot see anymore, or hear, and then there is nothing.

\---

Chanyeol is dragging his toothbrush around his gums, eyes half-closed and bleary with sleep, when he hears Yeonseok call his name from the kitchen. His hand stops brushing and his eyes crack open a little wider, because Yeonseok doesn’t sound very happy. Toothbrush sticking from his mouth, he shuffles into the kitchen, where Yeonseok is waiting, looking a little peeved. “I can’t reach the knives,” he says. It’s almost a pout, and Chanyeol is too sleepy to prevent the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. Whiny Yeonseok is not a common occurrence.

“It’s not funny,” Yeonseok says, and wow, yeah, that’s definitely a pout. Chanyeol shuffles over and drapes his long arms around Yeonsek’s broad shoulders, letting all his weight flop onto his shorter boyfriend. “Sorry, baby,” he mumbles around his toothbrush.

“Just get me the peeling knife already,” Yeonseok sounds a little exasperated, so Chanyeol stands up straight again and reaches up to open the top cupboard where he’s hidden the knife block. He’d only been thinking of getting the sharp objects out of Baekhyun’s reach. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Yeonseok wouldn’t be able to reach them either.

Yeonseok takes the paring knife from Chanyeol’s hand with a sigh and turns around to fix the last of his breakfast. He doesn’t say more, so Chanyeol leaves the kitchen again to finish in the bathroom.

Ever since Baekhyun moved in, Chanyeol has been just a tiny bit freaked out about anything that could potentially be used to harm someone. He knows Baekhyun never actively attempted to hurt himself, but Chanyeol is not taking any chances. Fears of finding Baekhyun too far gone to be saved plague him, and every normal household implement suddenly seems full of potential dangers. Yeonseok didn't say anything about Chanyeol’s crazy frenzy as he rushed out to buy a new induction stove and remove the cords from the blinds. He has put safety covers over every electrical outlet in their apartment and locks on all their cupboards, including the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He has removed every key to every room so that none of them can be locked and he has put safety catches on the windows to prevent them from opening more than a few inches. So far, Yeonseok has been remarkably tolerant of all the new inconveniences involved in doing just about any household chore, but Chanyeol can’t help feeling a little guilty.

He has just finished shaving when there’s a knock on the door. Yeonseok leans against the door frame and sends Chanyeol a small smile.

“I really am sorry about the knives,” Chanyeol says. “I know I’m going overboard. I just can’t help worrying...” He trails off as Yeonseok steps inside, closes the door behind him and takes both his hands, tugging him gently around from the sink so they’re facing each other.

“Instead of the top cupboard,” he says, “let’s put the knife block in one of the lower drawers and put a lock on it like you have everything else.” There’s a note of finality in his voice, one that doesn’t come out often, but one Chanyeol recognizes. It means that no matter how much he argues he isn’t going to win this one.

“Okay,” he mumbles sheepishly. Yeonseok squeezes his hands before letting go and pushing into the space between Chanyeol and the sink. Chanyeol should really get out and let Yeonseok finish his morning routine, but instead he sits down on the closed lid of the toilet and watches his boyfriend’s reflection in the mirror as he shaves.

Having Baekhyun living with them has pushed them into hiding. They use their real names instead of pet names, avoid any but the most casual touches, go to bed in their separate rooms instead of sharing one or the other of their beds like they usually do. None of this is Baekhyun’s fault, of course. No, it’s Chanyeol who has caused the change in dynamic, because he’s too afraid Baekhyun will suspect that Yeonseok is far more than just his flatmate. Yeonseok has been understanding of this, far more understanding than Chanyeol deserves, but having to watch every action in their own home is hard and it’s only getting harder as time goes by. Yeonseok hasn’t said anything, but Chanyeol can tell his boyfriend is struggling with the imposed restrictions too. He’s interrupted from his thoughts when Yeonseok turns around with a raised eyebrow.

“Have you fallen asleep over there?” he asks. Chanyeol shakes his head and, because they are behind the closed bathroom door and Baekhyun is still sleeping, gets up to press his lips to Yeonseok’s.

“Have a great day, love,” he whispers, and closes his eyes as Yeonseok kisses him back.

Yeonseok leaves shortly after in his uniform. Chanyeol doesn’t have work today and he’s looking forward to the day off. Baekhyun has a therapy session around eleven but other than that, Chanyeol wants to just relax. Half an hour later when he’s dressed and has put on a new pot of coffee, he knocks on the door to their guest bedroom and opens it to find Baekhyun snuggled up in the covers, only a tiny tuft of hair peeking out onto the pillow. He pulls the curtains open and comes over to shake the duvet-covered lump until Baekhyun groans.

“What time is it?” he mumbles.

“Eight thirty. Wakey wakey,” Chanyeol says and gives the lump that’s crawling further and further under the covers a gentle shove. Baekhyun lowers the blanket an inch to glare at Chanyeol.

“Too early,” he snarks and dives back under his covers, but Chanyeol is grinning, because this is Baekhyun showing more life than he has in weeks. Having the energy to be cranky has to be a good sign, right?

The psychiatrist that saw Baekhyun the morning after they found him had reached the conclusion that he'd been experiencing psychotic episodes caused by his depression. It had started a whole string of appointments with the psychiatric department and had resulted in relatively strong antidepressants, as well as antipsychotics to take if he shows signs of having another episode. Chanyeol immediately took it upon himself to manage Baekhyun’s medication and make sure he took the right dose every day. So far Baekhyun hasn’t complained. He spends most days sleeping or curled up on the couch in the living room, staring out into space. Chanyeol doesn’t mind that as long as he’s safe, but watching Baekhyun as a shell of the person he used to be is heartbreaking.

Thirty minutes later Baekhyun shuffles into the kitchen, his pyjamas swamping his bony frame. He takes the seat in front of the small white pill, swallows it, and turns to look at Chanyeol, as if seeking approval. Chanyeol smiles at him, and Baekhyun makes what is probably supposed to be a smile back, but it’s such an obvious effort that it makes Chanyeol’s heart hurt. Chanyeol wants to say something, but all the easy words that used to flow between them have been swallowed up by this awful illness. Moments later, Baekhyun’s eyes slide away from his face and go distant. Empty.

Baekhyun doesn’t touch the fruit Yeonseok cut and left out for him, but at least he stays there at the table. The only sound in the kitchen is the sound of Chanyeol eating. He tries pushing a mug of coffee towards Baekhyun, but his friend doesn’t respond, just keeps staring into the distance without seeing anything. Chanyeol gives up fifteen minutes later when he has finished his breakfast and gets up from the table to wash the dishes. When he turns around, he finds the chair empty. Baekhyun has disappeared so quietly he might as well be a ghost. Chanyeol glances across to his bedroom and sees the lump of covers in the bed through the open door. He tries not to let it bother him, but he can't help the way his heart sinks.

The morning goes by slower than Chanyeol would have liked it. Baekhyun is either sleeping again or sunk in his unresponsive state that might as well be sleeping. The door stays open in acknowledgement of Chanyeol’s rule that he must never be alone in a room with the door closed. There’s nothing in the room that could hurt him, but Chanyeol isn’t taking any chances. Baekhyun has accepted all the restrictions Chanyeol has put on him without complaint, but Chanyeol can’t help wishing that his friend would argue. Anything would be better than this endless apathy.

It’s so quiet in the apartment that it feels like being alone, and it’s strange. It gives Chanyeol time to think, time he isn’t sure he wants because there are too many thoughts waiting to surface in his mind. Every time he looks around in their apartment and sees the places where there once were pictures of him and Yeonseok together, a small needle is driven through his chest. He knows the pictures are just packed away in the wardrobe, ready to come out again once Baekhyun is back on his feet, but it still hurts, and it’s all Chanyeol’s own fault.

He tries to occupy himself with cleaning, but the thoughts still bother him. He needs some fresh air to clear his head, he decides. He can't leave Baekhyun in the apartment alone, but he can at least spend the hour Baekhyun is in therapy outside. An hour before eleven, Chanyeol knocks on Baekhyun’s doorframe.

“Get up and get dressed, we’re leaving in half an hour,” he says, waits until he hears an unintelligible mumble in response, then heads back into the kitchen to finish wiping the surfaces. The whole apartment is spotless and gleaming by the time Baekhyun turns up twenty minutes later. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie that swamps him, but it’s better than pyjamas, so Chanyeol doesn’t comment.

The car ride is only interrupted by the radio playing. Baekhyun is staring out of the window, his breath fogging it up. Chanyeol tries to focus on the road instead of his friend. He remembers times in college where they'd cranked up the music so high it could be heard outside, singing aloud to songs and acting crazy. He remembers deep talks of girlfriends and how it was in Baekhyun’s small car he had first told Chanyeol about Nari. He remembers how excited Baekhyun had been after his first rotation in plastics. He had been so certain he was going to be a plastic surgeon, his future laid out in front of him with that decision. Now there is no passion left in the man on the seat next to him. No excited conversation, no shared secret dreams, no promises of doing their best and surviving anything the world can throw at them together. Just a finger slowly drawing circles in the fog on the window.

Chanyeol parks in one of the patient parking spots in front of B block, the smaller psychiatric block next to the main hospital building. It’s only four stories and is dwarfed by the towering hospital, but it has an imposing air nonetheless. Baekhyun pulls his hood lower over his face as Chanyeol walks him to the outpatient reception and waits with him on the soft chairs. When Baekhyun is called in, Chanyeol gets up from his chair and promises to be waiting for him at the end of the session.

He leaves the building again and takes a deep breath as he walks across the carpark. His weather app told him it's supposed to rain later, but for now the sun is shining brightly. It’s not warm for March, but spring is certainly on its way and the great riverside Hangang Park spreads out in front of him. The grass is slowly getting greener, the early spring flowers are blooming and the trees have new buds, preparing to color the park when the weather gets a little warmer.

Chanyeol walks past his car and continues across the grassy areas towards the river, going down the steps set into the bank to get as close to the water as he can. The path right beside the river feels like an escape from the busyness of the city. He follows the path a little down the river until he finds a coupe of concrete steps that lead right the water's edge. He sits down on the top step, folding his arms on his knees, and gazes out over the wide rippling water.

He’s helping Baekhyun stay alive and get better. He’s driving him to and from appointments, making sure he takes his medicine. He has contacted Baekhyun’s parents and given them an extremely watered-down version of the situation, knowing Baekhyun hates the tiny village he grew up in and wouldn't want to be sent back there. He’s being a good friend to Baekhyun, he knows he is. Anyone would think he’s doing his best. But Chanyeol knows he isn’t, because he’s still doing things that aren’t right. He’s making Yeonseok suffer by forcing them to hide. He’s doing Baekhyun a disservice by not trusting him, not giving him a chance. He’s still hiding. He’s still afraid.

His older sister found out Chanyeol was gay when he was seventeen. She had caught him reading a webtoon with homosexual protagonists, staring at the artwork of two young men making out with both fear and desire in his eyes. She had asked him outright, and the way Chanyeol had frozen, staring at her with fearful, hunted eyes, had been answer enough for her. He’d been terrified she would scream at him, run to their parents, tell them what an abomination he was, but that hadn’t happened. Instead his sister had hugged him, told him she loved him no matter what, and sat on his bed for hours to talk with him. That had been the first time in his life Chanyeol had felt seen.

It hadn’t lasted long. The following evening the subject had come up on a talk show. “Disgusting,” his mother had commented, and Chanyeol had reversed straight back into hiding.

When he was twenty-four he attended a concert with a friend and met Yeonseok. Chanyeol was finishing med school and Yeonseok was in the police academy. They had spent many nights awake to cram for exams, lying on dorm room floors, discussing new singles and eating cold pizza. Despite having good friends in Baekhyun and Jongdae, Yeonseok soon became what Chanyeol would have described as his best friend. It was years into their friendship when Chanyeol finally realised Yeonseok wasn’t just a best friend to him. He was a whole lot more. The realisation terrified Chanyeol. People thought being gay was disgusting, and he didn’t want Yeonseok to be disgusted with him. He distanced himself, trying not to seem too eager to spend time with him. Trying to hide the feelings that were suddenly far too obvious. He knew he couldn’t bear it if Yeonseok turned on him.

A month later, Yeonseok had confronted Chanyeol in his apartment and asked Chanyeol why the hell he was avoiding him. Then, as Chanyeol blinked and stammered and tried to figure out what to say, Yeonseok had leaned over and kissed his cheek. Chanyeol had been so stunned he hadn’t known what to do or say. His first instinct had been to run away, but his body had been frozen solid.

Yeonseok had stood unashamedly in front of him and admitted his sexuality, admitted that he liked Chanyeol, and the fear and worry and shame that was all tangled up inside Chanyeol had been overwhelmed by the knowledge that Yeonseok _liked_ him, liked him _that_ way, and so Yeonseok wouldn’t hate Chanyeol for liking him back. He’d met Yeonseok’s eyes, and seen that despite his proud stance and the sureness in his voice there was still uncertainty in his gaze. Even strong, confident Yeonseok feared rejection. And so Chanyeol had closed his eyes and whispered three small words that had changed his life forever; _kiss me again_.

When Chanyeol finished his residency Yeonseok asked Chanyeol to move in with him, and their relationship was taken to another level. Slowly, as they grew accustomed to each other and the routines established between them, they had gotten comfortable within their own space. It was alright to love each other, and no one could tell them otherwise. The world outside was dangerous, and Chanyeol had to hide out there, but at home he was safe.

Chanyeol stayed safe until he accidentally outed himself to Jongdae, his feverish delirium overriding all the barriers he’d constructed. He’d been so horrified when the scraps of memory had come back to him that he'd felt physically sick, but Yeonseok had assured him that Jongdae was fine with it. Chanyeol had nearly choked on his pounding heart the next time he’d seen his friend, but Jongdae had never brought it up. Nothing had changed in their friendship at all. It was as if it truly didn’t matter to Jongdae that Chanyeol was gay.

Chanyeol knows this is what Yeonseok has been trying to tell him all along. Good friends won’t care if he's straight or gay or anything else. Good friends will love him for who he is. Good friends will stand by him through anything, if they’re worth calling good friends.

Chanyeol wants to call his boyfriend love and darling and sweetheart. He wants to cuddle on the couch and read books with Yeonseok’s head in his lap. He wants to kiss his boyfriend without having to look around first and he wants to back hug him as he’s cooking. He doesn’t want to hide anymore. The secret that has been weighing him down is drowning him, like a weight tied to his ankles as he tries desperately to stay afloat. Chanyeol gazes out across the water, at the sparkles where the sun hits the breeze-ruffled surface, and decides he's going to kick that weight free.

If Chanyeol is true to himself, stands strong and proud and free, the world will not stop turning. The sun above his head will still shine. The river before him will still flow. The people who truly love him will stand by him, and those who reject him were never worth his time.

There’s slight spring in Chanyeol's steps as he makes his way back towards the hospital and the outpatient clinic. His car is parked in the same spot as he left it. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. Chanyeol’s heart feels wide and light, and everything around him sings.

When he's collected Baekhyun from reception and they've returned home, Baekhyun disappears into the bedroom and goes back to sleep. Chanyeol is full of jitters. He can’t watch TV, he can’t read a book. If only Yeonseok would come home soon so he had someone to talk to.

He’s cooking dinner when the front door opens. It takes a fist punched against his thigh to stay in the kitchen, stirring in the pot. Yeonseok raises an eyebrow when he finds Chanyeol cooking.

“Wait, you can cook?” he asks, grinning. Chanyeol rolls his eyes. His fingers are jittering again, drumming against the counter.

“Come here,” he says. Yeonseok does as he’s told, but when Chanyeol surges forward and kisses him, it takes him by surprise enough that he pushes him away again.

“What…?” he starts, then trails off and just blinks up at Chaneyol, apparently so surprised by the display of love in the shared space that his words have completely disappeared. Chanyeol laughs, happiness swirling through every artery and vein in his body.

“What if Baekhyun wakes up?” Yeonseok asks, glancing at the open door to Baekhyun’s room.

“I don’t care,” Chanyeol says. The confusion on Yeonseok’s face is priceless. “We'll talk about it later, I promise.” Chanyeol leans closer again and presses a short kiss to Yeonseok’s forehead. His boyfriend looks adorable this confused. Yeonseok doesn’t push any further, instead going to set the table and then waking Baekhyun for dinner.

They eat with small talk. Baekhyun doesn’t join the conversation but he swallows his meds obediently and eats a little of the soup Chanyeol has prepared. Then, to both Chanyeol and Yeonseok’s surprise, Baekhyun agrees to watch a movie with them after dinner.

Chanyeol shares the couch with Baekhyun. He pulls his best friend close, and for the first time he does it with no flicker of fear that the friendly arm around the shoulders might be misconstrued. Baekhyun, for his part, snuggles into him without reserve, and Chanyeol wonders just how much he’s been worrying over things like this for nothing, all this time. The movie is action-packed and full of loud explosions. Yeonseok makes sarcastic comments about the uselessness of the cops and Chanyeol pokes fun at the medical inaccuracies, and once or twice he even feels Baekhyun giggle a little against his side at his comments. Life has been scary and full of obstacles lately, but as he watches the movie with his best friend and his boyfriend, Chanyeol has the feeling that this is okay. They are going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

Later, when Baekhyun has fallen asleep and Chanyeol and Yeonseok are on their way to bed, Chanyeol corners Yeonseok in the bathroom. He waits for Yeonseok to finish brushing his teeth and put his toothbrush away before he leans in to kiss him softly. Yeonseok tastes of fresh cinnamon toothpaste, because he knows Chanyeol doesn’t like the taste of mint.

“What’s with all this sudden affection?” Yeonseok asks when Chanyeol lets go of him. Chanyeol feels his heart speed up. It feels like he’s about to make a confession, about to change their lives forever. Maybe he is.

“I love you,” he says.

Yeonseok raises an eyebrow.

“I know, and I love you too, but what the hell is going on with you tonight?”

Chanyeol takes a deep breath.

“I want to tell Baekhyun we’re together.”

Yeonseok’s jaw drops, and Chanyeol can’t help laughing. He closes Yeonseok’s mouth with two fingers under his chin. Yeonseok’s eyes are nearly as round as his mouth was. It’s rare to see his boyfriend look so flabbergasted.

Yeonseok says, “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. For real. I want to tell Baekhyun, and maybe some of my other close friends too. I’m done forcing us to hide, Yeonseok. I love you and I don’t care if anyone else knows it.”

Yeonseok starts to smile. He reaches up, wraps both arms around Chanyeol’s neck and gazes into his eyes.

“You were right all along,” Chanyeol babbles. He’s talking too fast, he’s too hyper, too full of uncontained nervousness and excitement, but Yeonseok knows him and accepts him for everything he is, and Chanyeol is secure in that knowledge. “I want to give my friends the chance to really know me. I want to be able to trust them. I don’t want to drown any more.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?” Yeonseok’s eyes are shining.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, and suddenly there are tears welling up among the joy, because Yeonseok just looks so happy, and Chanyeol suddenly realises how long it has been since his boyfriend looked at him without just a hint of sadness and worry lingering at the corners of his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” Chanyeol says suddenly, “you’ve been so patient with me, ridiculously patient, and I’ve put you through so much -”

Yeonseok shuts him up by pressing a kiss to his mouth. He pulls back and smiles up at him. “Hey,” he says, “none of that. You’re worth being patient for.”

“You’re the best boyfriend in the world,” Chanyeol whispers, and Yeonseok’s grin tugs wider.

“I know,” he says, and kisses Chanyeol again, and this time his kiss is full of passion. It takes them, stumbling and bumping and pressing together, out of the bathroom, all the way down the hall, and into bed.

\---

Yixing dreams that he is a small child, and his mother is cradling him in her soft arms and crooning a lullaby. _Yuè er míng, fēng er jìng. Shùyè guà chuānglíng_. The familiar old words he has not thought of in years float around him until he slowly begins to come out of the dream. It’s a strange awakening. Instead of simply opening his eyes and being awake, he seems to be held just below the surface of consciousness. He’s aware, but he can’t get his eyes to open, and the dream-song is pulling him in strange directions. _Xiǎo bǎobǎo, kuài shuìjiào_ , his mother’s voice seems to be both around him and within him. _Shuì zài nàgè mèng zhōng_.

Pain comes to him before he manages to open his eyes. He shifts his head and feels his lips part, and the dream-song falters. A hand cups his cheek, a small hand with skin that is warm and a little loose and very, very soft. Yixing is confused, because it feels just the way his mother used to hold him. She would hold him in her arms, cup his face just like this, and sing lullabies for hours, patiently soothing her child who was so tired tears would fill his eyes and slip down his cheeks, and yet still he could not sleep.

He’s waking up, but he still hears her singing, still feels her hand on his face. Confusion grips him. Is his mother here? Where is he? He battles harder with the cloying heaviness holding him down. He draws in a breath and his eyes crack open. The blurry face that slowly comes into focus is that of his mother looking down at him. His forehead furrows in a mixture of confusion and pain, and she smiles at him softly.

“It’s alright, xiǎo xīng,” she says, the Changsha dialect musical in her voice as she calls him by his baby name. Little star, it means.

“Māma?” he whispers. “Why are you here?”

“I flew over from Changsha,” she says. “You got hurt, little one. I wanted to see you.”

Now Yixing remembers. They must have controlled the bleed in surgery, or he wouldn’t be waking up. He shifts his head to try and get a look at what they’re giving him and sees a unit of blood and another of saline. The room is dimly lit, the blinds drawn, and when he looks past his mother he sees that Songmi is sleeping in a chair in the corner. She looks exhausted. He frowns. Songmi had not been wearing her nursing scrubs when he last saw her. How long has it been? For his mother to have gotten here from China, it must have been a while.

He tries to ask the question, but his mouth is so dry he can’t get the words out, and it feels like his throat is sticking together. He starts to cough, and tears of pain flood his eyes as his lower abdomen pulls. That’ll be the surgical wound. He tries to stop coughing, aware that pulling a stitch will cause him to rebleed, but he can’t, and suddenly Songmi is there with water. She helps him take tiny sips until the coughing stops. Exhausted, Yixing lies back and tries to control the pain. Songmi asks him if he wants pain medication, and he shakes his head. Not yet. It’ll make him sleepy.

“How long?” he asks his wife. Songmi gently takes the hand his mother isn’t holding.

“Three days. You kept rebleeding, so they kept you under. You’ve had recombinant VIII twice a day and they think it’s under control now.” Yixing looks at her face, sees the purple smudges beneath her eyes, how her hair hangs limp and unstyled, and his heart falls.

“I’m so sorry, love,” he murmurs. “You were worried...”

Her eyes are soft and brimming with relief and love. “Don’t be sorry. You stayed with me, and that’s all I wanted.”

His mother starts to speak, but he’s still a bit out of it from the medications that were keeping him unconscious, and he starts to drift a little. Songmi and his mom are talking to each other in Mandarin over him, and the words start to go meaningless, only the tones of their voices falling around him.

It warms him inside to feel their care for him, but at the same time, he feels awful for what he’s put them through. Poor Songmi looks wrecked. He knows how beside himself with worry he would be if she was hurt. When his mother leaves the room for a while, he pulls Songmi’s hand closer until their clasped hands are against his heart.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

“I am now I know you’re going to be okay,” she says. “It puts things into perspective, you know? When I thought I was going to lose you, everything else stopped mattering.”

“Did you call mom?”

“Yes. I did tell her she didn’t have to come, but she insisted,” Songmi says. “Honestly, I’m glad she did. I had to do a couple of shifts, and it was a lot easier knowing she was with you.”

Yixing is touched. It’s a 6-hour flight between his hometown in China and Seoul, and his mom rarely comes to Korea, preferring to have Yixing and Songmi visit once a year or so. His mom put her life on hold and came all that way just for him.

“I guess I scared her. I haven’t had a serious bleed since I was a kid, but she’s always been a little freaked out by my haemophilia,” he says.

“I can understand why,” Songmi says. “You were crashing right in front of my eyes, and I knew what was happening and how we could treat it. It must have been terrifying for her when you were little. Having a sick child would be awful.”

Yixing nods slowly. “It would." His eyes go a little distant, and reading him, Songmi squeezes his hand gently.

“What?” she asks.

“Haemophilia is genetic,” Yixing says quietly. He looks up at her, pain filling his eyes. “Is it even right for me to try and father a child? Even if we try IVF, if I pass the gene on I would cause my children to suffer.” He bites his lip. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. I can’t father a child naturally. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.”

Songmi gazes at him sadly. “Yixing…”

“I know,” he sighs. “I know they’re not connected. I’m being superstitious. All the same...”

“Don’t think about it now,” she tells him. “You’ve only just woken up, things won’t look clear to you right now. We’ll figure everything out. There’s no hurry.” She leans forward a little and Yixing lifts his hand. She takes it and presses his palm against her cheek and smiles down at him. “No matter what happens, Yixing, I’m okay as long as you’re still with me.”


	20. March 17th

“Jongdae!”

Jongdae turns. His heart is already sinking even before he rests eyes on the person calling him, because he knows that sharp voice very well. His eyes flick up and down the hospital corridor before settling on the slim middle-aged woman in a white coat approaching him. He is looking for - hoping for - the presence of other people, but the reflex is so deeply ingrained in him that he isn’t consciously aware of it. But there is nobody else in the corridor that separates the obstetrics and gynaecology department from the labour and delivery unit, and Jongdae grips his clipboard a little tighter as he sends Dr. Heo a pleasant smile. In heels she stands at eye-level with him, and is as well-groomed as always, bobbed hair dyed a gleaming russet, fine-boned face perfectly made-up, any wrinkles that might have arrived with the onset of her fourth decade ruthlessly banished with Botox.

“Yes, Chief Heo?” he answers politely, as he always does, despite the abrupt, almost rude tone she always uses with him. He’s been working under Dr. Heo Youngae, the obstetrics and gynaecology department chief and a renowned specialist in obstetric infectious diseases, for his entire career, and he’s pretty sure she’s never really seen him as anything more than the clueless intern she first laid eyes on seven years ago.

“I want you on call tonight,” she tells him. “Your shift will end at 10 am tomorrow.”

Jongdae’s heart takes another swoop towards his shoes. He was on call last night too, and it was a busy one. He'd snatched less than three hours’ sleep total between multiple calls to the ED and the recurrent, gruesome nightmare that has been plaguing him for the past few weeks. If he doesn’t get off until 10 am tomorrow, he’ll have been working 40 hours straight. Nothing he hasn’t done before, of course, but the number of extended or back-to-back shifts the chief has been loading him with is just getting higher and higher. Ahreum is starting to complain that he might as well be working in a different country, for all she gets to see of him.

He rubs his fingers anxiously down the edge of his plastic clipboard. “I was on call last night too…” he starts, then trails off as Dr. Heo’s eyebrows snap together and her face darkens. He knows that expression. Knows it far too well.

“So?” Her tone is aggressive.

“Well, I just...it’s just that means I’ll have been here for forty hours straight, and I’ve already done a thirty-six hour shift this week, with only a day off between,” he explains. He tries to sound reasonable, but she's making him nervous, stealing his coherency, making him feel like a stammering intern again. “And, you know, I have a family. I promised my wife I’d be home tonight. I’d really rather not take this one.”

He should have known better than to argue. She takes a step forward, getting right in his face. Jongdae takes an automatic step back and finds himself backed up against the wall. He can smell her perfume. His hands start to sweat, but he refuses to let his nervousness show. He’s been dealing with Heo Youngae since he was 23 years old. He knows all too well that showing discomfort only makes her worse.

“Oh, I see.” Dr. Heo’s tone drips with sarcasm. “You’re going to slide out of this and let your juniors pick up your slack, is that it?” She jabs a sharp finger against his forehead, making his head rock back. Jongdae feels a shiver of dread crawl up and down his bones. He grips his clipboard tighter than ever. There's nobody around, but it's still a public corridor. She won't...

“You’ve gotten rather full of yourself since becoming an attending surgeon, Jongdae," Dr. Heo continues acidly. "I never picked you for the type to slack off, but I guess I was wrong.”

Jongdae nearly gasps aloud at the sheer unfairness of this, but he manages to contain the reaction. Even so, it stings. He’s been sacrificing so much to make sure too much pressure doesn’t fall on the residents, and not only are his efforts being ignored, she’s actually trying to call him out for slacking off. What more can he do? Does she want him to actually live in the hospital?

“I suppose you think it’s beneath you to pull long shifts now,” Dr. Heo says, eyes glittering. “I suppose you’d rather risk a patient suffering because an exhausted resident isn’t able to give them proper care than lose a couple of hours’ of your precious sleep.” The words are accompanied by another poke to the forehead, hard enough this time to make his head knock back against the wall. It doesn’t hurt, but he doesn’t like it at all. She hasn’t gotten physical with him since he was a junior resident. He’s not supposed to need her discipline now. Shame curdles in his stomach, and he’s suddenly glad, after all, that the corridor is empty. At least none of the nurses or junior doctors are witnessing his humiliation.

“Chief Heo, that’s not fair,” he tries again. It goes against everything he's ever been taught to argue with her, but he’s not going to just let her bully him this time. It's not for his own sake - he has his family to think of. “I’ve been clocking more than eighty hours a week for the past two months. That’s far more than the residents are doing. I’m only asking for one night.”

“And what makes you think you deserve a night off, Jongdae?” Dr. Heo snaps. “Three deaths on your hands in the past few months, and you think you’ve got nothing to improve? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Jongdae actually feels the blood drain from his face.

“I came under fire for our department statistics in the last managerial meeting, and you’re responsible for that. You better do all you can to become a better doctor, or I might have to re-look at those cases and see if there wasn’t some negligence involved.”

Jongdae feels sick. He knows she’s using this to get to him. He wasn’t negligent. His colleagues confirmed it. The M&M conference confirmed it. He’s just been unlucky. It would have been the same if any surgeon had taken those patients. But he can’t make the words come out, because despite him knowing all those things, something deep inside him agrees with Dr. Heo. It’s the part of him that remembers all too clearly the way the lives of those women slipped away beneath his hands. It’s the part of him that is torn apart by being unable to prevent death, because all he ever wanted to do was help bring life into the world. It’s the part of him that has taken his boss’s bullying for so many years that he accepts it as normal. Perhaps even as something he deserves.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Anything to get her away from him, get her glittering eyes out of his face, stop her from saying anything else about the lost patients, because if she does he isn’t sure that he’ll be able to hang on to the last shreds of his composure. He bows his head, lowering his eyes. Showing his submission. “It was disrespectful of me to argue. I know you’re balancing a lot of staff, and we don’t see the bigger picture from where we stand. I’ll take the shift.”

Triumph slides across her face. He sees it, but he doesn’t care. She wins, of course. She always does. Why did he even bother trying to stand up for himself? Right now, he’s just grateful that she’s taken a step back, so that he can breathe again.

“So long as you know,” she says. “Don’t force me to do this again. You shouldn’t need reminding of your work ethic, Jongdae. You’re not a junior anymore.”

He nods, humiliation flooding him. He stands still and silent, waiting until the clacking of her heels recedes back into the ob-gyn department and turns a corner. Then he flops back against the wall, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. It has been a long time since Dr. Heo managed to rattle him so completely.

He doesn’t have time to linger, though. He was on his way to a delivery before she interrupted him. He has to get to his patient. He takes another deep breath and passes a hand over his face. He shoves down frightened, ashamed Jongdae, and calls up confident, smiling Dr. Kim. Then he pushes away from the wall and walks down the long corridor and into the labour and delivery unit.

“Hi, Changying,” he smiles as he greets the receptionist, and her face lights up when she sees him. “How are you doing today?”

“Hi, Dr. Kim,” Changying says, standing up to greet him. “It’s been a little busy, but we’re surviving!”

“Glad to hear it,” Jongdae says. “Could you tell me which room Lee Hyojoo is in?”

Changying doesn’t need to look at her computer. “Six,” she says. “Nurse Han is in there already.”

Jongdae thanks her and makes the short walk to his patient's room. Hyojoo has had all her prenatal appointments with him, both for this new baby and for her now 18-month-old daughter, so he knows her well. He knocks, and when a voice from inside calls for him to come in, he enters the room. Hyojoo is already lying on the birthing bed. She manages a smile for him despite the sweat on her face. Her sister is in the room with her, as well as Nurse Han, who has the entonox tube and the fetal monitoring equipment all set up. Her husband, a long-range fisherman, has been unable to get back to shore in time.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Hyojoo,” he says, smiling back at her. “How are you doing?”

“Not too bad, considering,” she tells him, a little breathlessly. “But I’ll be glad when this is over.”

He nods sympathetically and assures her that she’s doing wonderfully and that it will all be over soon, and then gets a quick report from Nurse Han. Hyojoo has had an epidural and her blood pressure is within safe limits. The baby’s heartbeat showing on the monitor is 140, also normal for labour. Everything looks fine to go ahead with a vaginal delivery, and relief slips through him. Emergency C-sections have become the subject of his recurring nightmare, and he takes nothing for granted these days, not even healthy mothers who have had perfectly normal pregnancies with no warning signs.

Half an hour later, his nightmare comes alive. Hyojoo, in the middle of pushing, suddenly sits bolt upright, gasps, then flops back on the bed. Her eyes are closed, she's completely limp, and when Nurse Han tries to awaken her, she doesn't respond. Seconds later, she begins to have a grand mal seizure.

Jongdae’s heart starts to bang hard against his ribs. Chills of horror crawl down his skin. No, he thinks, even as he’s leaping to assess her. No. Not again. This cannot be happening again.

“Call a code OB,” he tells Nurse Han. It’s the obstetric emergency code. He keeps his voice calm, keeps his terror hidden. He has to. He is the surgeon in charge and he simply has no other choice. Hyojoo’s sister backs away as staff begin to flood into the room. The anaesthesiologist supports her airway with oxygen via facemask. The seizure stops twenty seconds later, and Jongdae takes Hyojoo's vital signs, forcing himself not to rush so he doesn’t miss anything, while the anaesthesiologist swiftly intubates. He must be calm and clear-headed and in control. Hyojoo's pulse is racing, blood pressure low, oxygen sats dropping, and the fetal heart rate is falling fast, way too fast, dropping from a healthy 140 to a distressed 80 in seconds. Bad. Very, very bad.

Jongdae thinks fast while the resuscitation team stands by. He’s sure Hyojoo is going to deteriorate further. She’s going to arrest, the signs are all there, but why? There are signs of haemodynamic instability too, and his mind races as he continues to assess her.

“What was the epidural dose?” he asks Nurse Han, but the answer she gives him is well below the maximum usage guidelines. Unlikely to be local anaesthetic toxicity. The seizure only lasted twenty seconds, so not pre-eclampsia. No signs of anaphylaxis, none of cerebral haemorrhage...

The fetus is in acute distress, heart rate dipping right down to 70. Seconds later Hyojoo arrests, as Jongdae knew she would. The resuscitation team displace the uterus as best they can and start chest compressions, and Jongdae knows he has to make a decision, right now, or both mother and baby are going to die. He could use forceps to deliver the child vaginally and avoid the additional surgical and anaesthetic risks, but a forceps delivery has a risk of failure, and neither Hyojoo nor her baby have time to waste.

“I’m going to do a bedside C-section,” he announces.

The equipment is rushed to him. He does the C-section while they’re still performing compressions. He makes his cuts with practiced ease, lifts out a baby boy and hands him to the first pair of hands that are held out, not even seeing the staff member who takes him as he goes in to remove the placenta.

“I have a radial pulse on the mother,” someone calls, and another voice reads out the recovering numbers of her blood pressure. Hyojoo’s heart is beating again. Jongdae hears the cawing cry of a newborn, and, thank God, the baby is alive too, but he’s not done yet. Hyojoo is still in danger. He doesn’t know what caused her seizure and cardiac arrest, but what he does know is that the uterus hasn’t contracted after delivery. It's uterine atony, the leading cause of severe blood loss during C-section, the blood vessels that were attached to the placenta bleeding freely instead of being closed off by the contraction of the uterus. If the drugs to combat the atony don’t work, Jongdae needs to be ready to do an urgent hysterectomy, or she’s going to rapidly bleed out.

“Transfer her to the OR and get me an assisting obstetric surgeon,” he snaps, too stressed to speak politely anymore. In the labour unit's operating room he gives methergine and intramyometrial prostaglandin and everything else he can think of, but the uterine atony does not resolve, and as soon as his second-year resident shows up they’re straight into an emergency hysterectomy. It’s bloody and messy and surgical assistants are squeezing the blood bags to speed up the transfusions, erythrocytes and fresh plasma and platelets and cryoprecipitate, a desperate attempt to keep enough blood in her system to keep her alive. Jongdae feels like he’s standing in a wind-tunnel, all their voices ripping around him, all his senses on high alert. Blood, blood is everywhere. Why is there so much blood? There shouldn’t be this much. She’s not clotting properly. Coagulopathy on top of everything.

Usually he can narrow down his focus intently while he’s performing surgery, but today he hears everything, sees everything. He’s wide open to every input, and his mind keeps on racing through differential diagnoses. He discusses them rapidly with Nara across the surgical table, using her to bounce ideas off, the feedback from the other doctors and nurses in the OR watching monitors and taking clinical readings all giving him clues, until he’s excluded everything else, and there’s one thing left.

“Amniotic fluid embolism,” he says, fingers not pausing for a second as he swifty ties sutures and breaks his sentences with instructions for the theatre nurse to cut the thread.

“What?” Nara has never heard of it. Not surprising. It’s so rare that it might be seen only once in a career, but Jongdae has been reading up on maternal mortality lately, for obvious reasons.

“The amniotic fluid surrounding the baby in the uterus has entered the mother's bloodstream,” he tells her. “It’s rare - incidence of two in ten thousand - but often fatal, and it causes coagulopathy and haemorrhage, that’s why we’re seeing so much blood. What’s the collection amount?” he asks an assistant.

“Close to 3000 ml,” he’s told, and he nods grimly. It’s only the rapid transfusions that are keeping Hyojoo alive. If they hadn’t been so quick earlier she’d already have bled out.

“Call the ICU and ask them to send an intensivist here, please,” he says to the theatre nurse. The ICU team will manage this condition, but he wants to confirm his diagnosis with an intensivist first. Dr. Lee Eunsook turns up ten minutes later, just as the hysterectomy is finished. Jongdae leaves Nara to close Hyojoo up and checks on the progress of the transfusions and administration of drugs to treat the coagulopathy before allowing himself to turn away and give his attention to Dr. Lee. She isn’t scrubbed in, so she waits in the doorway as Jongdae comes over. She smiles at him, and somewhere amidst his state of sky-high stress, Jongdae appreciates it.

“I think this is amniotic fluid embolism,” he says, “but I’d appreciate a second opinion. Would you mind if I run my differential past you?”

“Of course,” Eunsook says. “Go for it.”

He talks her through the differential. About halfway through, his hands start to shake and his voice begins to jerk between words, but he keeps talking anyway. He’s gone beyond the point of caring what Eunsook thinks, or what anyone thinks really, and he’s done all he can for Hyojoo, so he doesn’t have to keep it together anymore. When he’s explained everything, as well as the need for the emergency hysterectomy, Eunsook nods.

“That all makes sense to me. I agree with the diagnosis of AFE,” she says. “I’ll admit her.”

A trembling breath leaves him. Relief that Dr. Lee agrees, that he hasn’t missed something, given the wrong drugs, done an unnecessary surgery that has just rendered Hyojoo irreversibly infertile. Relief that behind him the ECG monitor still shows a pulse, and the blood pressure is stabilizing. He stumbles away to lean against the OR wall. Hyojoo is not out of danger, but she has a chance. They’ll take care of her in the ICU. She’s out of his hands.

“Just give me a minute,” he says to Eunsook when she hesitates beside him, obviously wondering whether he’s okay. He finds a reassuring smile to send her, which drops from his face the second she’s gone. Hyojoo is transferred, doctors and nurses leave, cleanup begins, and Jongdae leans against the wall and watches it all.

He feels shell-shocked. Hyojoo is alive. Her baby is alive. He doesn’t have another death on his hands. He should be rejoicing, so why does he feel like crying? Everything feels so tight and messed up and pressed down inside him, curled and full of tension like a coiled spring, and he’s scared it’s going to snap when he least expects it. He’s already lashed out at those interns. He’s lashed out at his own son. He’s scared it’s going to happen again. Perhaps it’s a good thing, after all, that he can’t go home tonight. What if he snaps at Ahreum next, or Chorong, or, God forbid, little Mari?

Jongdae has never felt this stressed out in his life and he just doesn’t know how to process it. Maybe it’s because he’d usually talk it all out with his friends as soon as something bad happened, but he hasn’t been able to do that for months. His friends are dealing with problems far worse than his. How can he burden them with his own silly issues? They need him to be there for them. They need him to be strong, to be the listener, the one who helps. And Jongdae wants to be. He really does. He’d do anything to help his friends. It’s just the way he is.

The cleaning staff need him out of the OR. Jongdae grasps for the tattered shreds of his composure, de-gowns, and scrubs out. When he gets back to his office he takes out his phone to call Ahreum.

“I’m so sorry,” he says when she makes a sad little sound. She sounds so disappointed, and it fills him with unhappiness and guilt. “I really wanted to come home tonight, but you know how it is.” She does know. She knows Chief Heo is difficult, though he's never told her the full extent of it, and she knows the department is understaffed and that he worries about the workload on the residents. She understands, but she’s still sad, and he’s just as sad as she is.

“The kids miss you,” she tells him, and the guilt curls him up even tighter.

“I miss them too,” he says. “Can I talk to them quickly?”

“Chorong and Bodeul are at taekwondo,” she tells him, “but you can talk to Mari.”

He gets an adorable, confused babble from Mari, who squeals with delight when he switches to a video call app and tries to press her chubby hands through the screen of Ahreum’s tablet at him. Jongdae's heart twists with longing even as he laughs and taps at her nose and tells her he loves her.

“Love daddy,” Mari says back, and Jongdae thinks he’s really going to cry if he’s not careful. He knows it’s just a stress reaction. He’s overtired and his emotions are too close to the surface. He wishes with all his heart that he could just go home and hold his baby in his arms and kiss her curly head. But he can’t, and he still has patients to see, so with a heavy heart he gets a hold of himself and says a last few words to Ahreum. Now that the video is on, she can see his face, and her forehead pinches.

“Darling, what's wrong?” she asks. “You look…” she can’t seem to immediately find the right word, and Jongdae quickly jumps in before she can come up with “exhausted” or “stressed” or “upset”. He doesn’t want those words vocalised. Not by her. Not about him.

“I'm fine,” he says quickly. “Just the usual stuff. Long night, long day, you know how it goes. I promise I’ll be off tomorrow morning, and I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’ll sleep,” Ahreum says, “if I have any say in the matter. Which I do.”

Jongdae laughs noncommittally, tells her he loves her, and ends the call. He has patients to see, and a long night ahead of him.

\---

Joonmyun stares at the echocardiogram on the computer screen in front of him. Beside him, Dr. Ahn is studying the images with equal intensity. It's a case of aortic regurgitation, very obvious in the images in front of them.

“He needs an aortic valve replacement. A repair isn’t enough,” Joonmyun says. Dr. Ahn nods. They agree on this so far. The rest of the treatment, however, is the reason they’re stuck in this small dark office together.

The cardiologist turns from the screen to look at Joonmyun. “Giving him a metallic valve is going to put him on anticoagulants for the rest of his life, Dr. Kim. He’s only nineteen. The risk of hemorrhaging won’t diminish with age.”

She scrolls through the images again. Park Jonghyun has a congenital heart defect that has gone unseen until he suddenly collapsed during a soccer match. While it may have been easily repaired when he was a child, the only option now is replacing the aortic valve. Finding the right replacement isn’t as easy as it may seem, though. Every option comes with a multitude of benefits and a whole host of disadvantages.

“I know, but a tissue valve isn’t going to last him much more than ten or fifteen years. By then it’ll start degenerating fast and he will eventually need a new one. Open heart surgery isn’t exactly risk-free.”

They look at each other, then back at the images. The small wall clock ticks away the seconds.

“I wouldn’t recommend a tissue valve for anyone under the age of sixty-five,” Joonmyun says eventually, breaking the silence.

“I see your point, but I don't like the idea of putting such a young kid on anticoagulants for the rest of his life."

“He might not be able to roughhouse the way he’s used to on anticoagulants, but I dare say it’s better than dying,” Joonmyun says. “Metallic makes a lot more sense in this case. We can give the kid his life back for the most part with a metallic valve.”

It feels a little like negotiating, but they have to agree on the best course. Dr. Ahn will be responsible for further treatment and for correcting the medication when Joonmyun is done, so he can’t just do what makes most sense to him surgically. Dr. Ahn sighs and reaches for the computer mouse to close the echocardiogram.

“Okay. Let’s go with the metallic aortic valve,” she agrees, and Joonmyun silently celebrates his small victory. The walk from the small office to his OR doesn’t take more than a few minutes and once there, he informs his team of the procedure they’re about to do. He goes towards the washroom when someone taps his shoulder. It’s Dr. Lee, and by his side stands a young girl with a nervous smile.

“This is our new intern, Lee Kyungri,” Dr. Lee says. The girl beside him bows slightly at Joonmyun. “She was just transferred to cardiology from obstetrics. Do you mind if she observes the valve replacement?”

Joonmyun’s eyes go momentarily distant as he runs through the procedure he’s about to do, but there’s nothing that would make having an observing intern in the room a problem.

“That’s fine with me,” he says. Dr. Lee thanks him, gently pushes Kyungri in Joonmyun’s general direction and hurries away. Joonmyun sends the intern a smile. As they walk towards the scrubbing area he asks her what rotations she’s completed and what she’s already seen. She’s been present at a couple of obstetric surgeries, but that's all, and Joonmyun knows cardiothoracic surgery is like nothing else. He is literally dealing with the difference between life and death when he stops a heart to perform a surgery, then starts it beating again.

“What do you know about this patient?” he asks as they're scrubbing in.

Kyungri kicks the foot valve and runs her soaped up hands under the water. “Dr. Lee only told me that it’s an aortic valve replacement,” she says, so Joonmyun gives her a quick run-through her through the patient history. It’ll make it a lot easier to understand what she’s observing.

In the OR, with Jonghyun intubated and the CPB machine prepared, Joonmyun makes the first cut, a straight line down the sternum. As he cuts through layers of fatty tissue and muscle, his second year resident, Sera, works the suction. Joonmyun exposes the top of the sternum and the bottom before he looks up and makes eye contact with the anaesthesiologist.

“Ready to crack open the sternum,” he says. The scrub nurse comes forward with the small saw. It’s electric, only long enough to cut through the bone. He's aware of Kyungri shuffling a little closer as he quickly cuts through the bone. It’ll be hard for her to see much of what’s going on with him and the theatre team surrounding the patient. He’ll try and give her a better view later, but for now he needs to focus.

He seals off the small bleeding that comes from the bone marrow. The retracter splits open Jonghyun’s chest in front of them. As Joonmyun gently cuts the pericardium open to fully reveal the strong young heart, he hears a gasp of admiration behind him. Beating hearts are a sight to behold when they’re looked at like this. This is raw, primal life beneath their hands.

“Sutures." He holds out a hand and the scrub nurse hands him the equipment. As he places small sutures in the pericardium to hold it up and away so that the aorta is exposed throughout the procedure, he explains what he's doing for Kyungri's benefit. Sera leans over the patient to suction a small bit of blood that comes from the pericardium. It’s her job at the moment to make sure Joonmyun works in a bloodless environment, but one day she will be the one holding the scalpel and making the incision in the main artery of the heart.

With everything exposed and ready, Joonmyun again looks at the anaesthesiologist.

“We’re ready to put him on the CPB." The anaesthesiologist nods. A few sutures into the pulmonary vein and the aorta to insert the catheters and Jonghyun is hooked up to the CPB.

“Remove the air.” Joonmyun hands Sera a small syringe. She’s looking at him expectantly and Joonmyun nods towards the small tubes sutured tightly to Jonghyun’s blood vessels and the surrounding tissue. Sera takes the syringe and pulls out any leftover air that might’ve been in the tubes. When she’s done, she looks up to get Joonmyun’s approval. He nods with a smile that is hidden behind his mask.

“Let’s get going! Everybody ready to clamp the aorta?”

It’s so silent in the OR a pin drop could be heard, but everything is as it’s supposed to be. Everybody is ready to slowly stop the heart and let the machine do the perfusion of Jonghyun’s body.

When the heart has stopped, Joonmyun leans in and carefully cuts open the aorta, right where it connects to the heart. The valve doesn’t close fully. Instead of three leaflets there are only two, and with time they have separated more and more, preventing efficient pumping. This is what he’s going to replace.

“Suction,” he tells Sera. There isn’t much blood left in the heart anymore, only the small amount they’re still giving it to continue perfusion of the heart muscle. He cuts the two defective leaflets out of the the aorta with steady hands, gently removing only what needs to be removed and nothing more. He notices Kyungri peering towards the small bowl in which the leaflets are placed. He'll give her a more thorough explanation when they’re done with surgery, but right now he needs to focus on what he’s about to do.

He places the sizer inside and tugs a little at it. Then he looks at Sera.

“What do you think?” he asks. Sera tightens her hold on the suction just a little. Joonmyun notices the signs of nervousness.

“It looks like a tight fit,” she answers and holds her breath. If it wasn’t because he could relate to the nervousness of wanting to please a superior he would’ve chuckled. Instead he nods.

“Good. It’s perfect. The valve will fit just right.”

The anaesthesiologist confirms that Jonghyun’s vital signs are all stable, so Joonmyun continues. He puts in a suture with supporters in both corners before he has the scrub nurse unpack the aortic valve. Then he sutures between the two corner sutures, making sure there are supports around all of them to prevent them from tearing through the tissue when Jonghyun’s heart starts beating again with all the power of a fit 19-year-old soccer player. The new metallic valve is connected to the suture strings around the opening and is slowly lowered into place. When it sits tight, Joonmyun looks up at his team. The younger doctors in the room are watching with bated breath, while the more experienced scrub nurses don’t seem the least bothered by what is happening. So far, this is a completely routine surgery with no complications. Joonmyun likes them best that way.

When he’s done with the valve, he sutures the aorta back to the heart. All that’s left to do now is pull Jonghyun from the CPB.

“Put him in Trendelenburg and let’s get this heart back,” Joonmyun says. The scrub nurse swiftly changes the table position. As Joonmyun slowly removes some of the tubes, the heart fills with blood once again and for a brief second everybody holds their breaths. The collective relief floods the OR as Jonghyun’s heart starts beating.

“Rhythm is a little irregular,” he says and doesn’t have to say anything more as Sera hands him the defibrillator paddles. A small shock is enough to convert Jonghyun’s heart rhythm to a normal one. Closing up goes without problems. As Joonmyun puts in the last wire suture around his sternum, he looks down at his patient and sees a young boy with a future, a future he might not have had if his heart defect hadn’t been discovered in time.

“Great job, everybody!” he tells the OR team as he takes a step away from the patient and lets Sera close the soft tissue.

Out of surgery and out of his scrubs, he goes to check on his phone. It’s become a habit these days with Yejin at home, and while he might sleep a little better now that Yejoon is three months old, there are so many other things to worry about and it’s never far from Joonmyun’s mind.

Yejoon is smiling in the picture Yejin has just sent him, gummy smile and crinkles around his eyes as he sends his mother the cutest smile a baby has ever sent an adult. He's been starting to smile properly over the last couple of weeks, but this is the best yet. It’s utterly adorable and Joonmyun nearly melts right there on the spot at the sight, but at the same time something inside him aches. His fingers drift to his son’s face on the phone screen as his heart aches. How many more smiles will he miss?

Chatter behind him unfreezes him and he promptly puts his phone back in his pocket.

“That was awesome, Dr. Kim!” Kyungri says as she and Sera walk up to him. “Thank you so much for the opportunity to observe!” She bows deeply and Sera laughs as she pulls her away from him and down the corridors towards the breakroom.

When Joonmyun arrives home, his heart feels strangely heavy. It feels like disappointment and guilt. It’s silly, really. He knows he can’t be there for everything but still, seeing the photo of Yejoon smiling has brought something up that also feels a little like jealousy and that is the last thing he wants to feel.

Yejin is smiling at him when he unlocks the door and steps inside. “Hey, Yejoon’s dad,” she says and pecks his cheek as she walks past.

“Hey darling,” he whispers behind her. He then puts his bag down and takes off his shoes. “Where’s my boy?” Yejoon isn’t in his room nor is in the playroom they’ve decorated just for him. Yejin chuckles and points towards the living room.

“Playing with his sensory balls,” she says. Joonmyun quickly hurries in to watch his son on the floor, reaching out to grab the balls of different textures. He hasn’t quite yet managed to grab onto anything but he’s getting there quickly and it won’t be long before he’ll be holding on tight to whatever’s within reach. He’s suckling on the balls as he explores them with wide open eyes and Joonmyun sits down on the floor to watch him.

Yejin has followed him in. She reaches out towards his shoulders and squeezes them. She’s seen his weariness.

“Had a bad day?” she asks. Joonmyun shakes his head.

“The usual,” he says and leans back to watch her from below. She seems worried, eyes not really believing him. Joonmyun sighs and turns back to watch Yejoon. “I’m just sad I'm missing his first smiles.” He hadn't been going to admit it, it isn’t useful to say things like that out loud, but the words slip past his lips regardless. Yejin sighs and sits down beside him.

“Honey,” she says, and Joonmyun can hear the concern embedded in the word. He wants to reassure her and yet the words don't seem to come at all. The only thing he feels is disappointment in himself and fear he’ll lose out on practically everything else.

“What if I won’t get to see his first step? Or hear his first word? What if I miss his first soccer game or his first spelling bee because I'm called to an emergency? He probably won’t want to introduce his first girlfriend to me either...” The thoughts are slipping away from him, becoming more and more ridiculous, but Joonmyun can’t stop. When he’s on-call he can be needed within minutes and there will be no explanation, just empty disappointment as he disappears once again. Yejin kneels down beside him and takes his hand.

“Stop,” she says gently and reaches over to push the ball a little closer to Yejoon so he can grab hold of it. “You’re overthinking again. Don’t worry about what might happen in the future. Just be here, now.” Joonmyun sighs, and she wraps both arms around him and hugs him tightly.

“Why don’t you read him a book while I start cooking?”

Joonmyun looks at her as she gets up. She pats his head gently before she leaves son and father alone in the living room. Yejoon has turned away from his exciting sensory balls and is now looking at Joonmyun. They stare at each other, Yejoon trying to mimic Joonmyun’s facial expression, and Joonmyun finds himself slowly smiling. His son follows, whole face creasing into an expression of pure joy, before he lets out a small giggle. It’s the first time he's heard Yejoon laugh like this and Joonmyun just about explodes with love. The guilt is pushed aside as Yejoon rocks on his tummy with laughter bubbling from his lips.

“Let’s go find a book,” Joonmyun tells his son and rises from the floor. Yejoon laughs again when he’s lifted from the floor and cuddled into his father’s chest. His son is a healthy six kilos despite the three weeks early arrival to their world and Joonmyun bounces a little on his heels as he brings his son with him to his bedroom. They have a small bookshelf full of picture books and ever since Yejoon was born, Joonmyun has enjoyed showing him pictures of animals. It’s only becoming more fun now that Yejoon is getting a little older. They sit on the floor, Yejoon in Joonmyun’s lap as he reaches out towards the sensory board books of farm animals.

As Joonmyun reads simple words out loud and describes the sound of each farm animal, Yejoon reaches over to touch the book and the fake fur embedded between pages. Having a newborn is so much different from a three month old, yet it feels like hardly any time has passed. Seeing the immense development that has happened in the space of 12 weeks makes Joonmyun feel mildly terrified. In the next three months Yejoon will go through even more development, he will start to notice the world around him, and Joonmyun won’t be able to be there every step of the way. He reaches the last page of the book just as a lump lodges itself in his chest and he chokes a little. He doesn’t want to think of all the things he can’t be for Yejoon. He doesn’t get to dwell on it, thankfully, because Yejin steps in and sends them both a loving look.

“Food is ready,” she says and leaves her boys alone again. Yejoon is still babbling, reaching out towards the fake feather of the rooster on the last page. Joonmyun leans down to press his lips to the top of Yejoon’s head. Instead of thinking of the things he can’t be, he should think of the things he can. He can support his family, he can give Yejoon the best opportunities in life, and most importantly of all, he can love him with every fibre of his being.

“I promise to be there for you no matter what,” he whispers, then blows loud raspberries against Yejoon’s hair, making him squeal with laughter.

“We better go or mommy will get impatient,” he chuckles and gently lifts Yejoon into his arms again. The book clatters to the floor as they leave the room and walk into the kitchen. Joonmyun looks at his wife as he stands in the doorway. She’s putting side dishes onto the table. When she’s done she turns to Joonmyun.

“Let’s eat, shall we?”

She takes Yejoon from his arms, sits down and unclasps her bra to breastfeed. Joonmyun sits down opposite his small family. The warmth of the cozy apartment is nothing compared to the warmth in his heart. Sensing him watching her, Yejin looks up at him with gentle concern and Joonmyun sends her a smile.

“I love you,” he says. Instead of answering, Yejin yelps when Yejoon sucks a little too hard, but Joonmyun knows that she loves him. He doesn’t need the words.

\---

Jongdae sits in the obstetrics and gynaecology workroom, staring blankly at the computer screen. It is 9 am. One more hour. He should really fill it with doing something useful, and he knows Chief Heo would love nothing better than to catch him “slacking off”, but his mind is foggy and his eyes sting and tear up when he tries to focus on the screen. He’d hoped working in the general workroom with the residents instead of his quiet office might help keep him awake. Well, he’s awake, but focusing on the documentation he needs to catch up on seems about as possible as scaling Mt. Everest.

The night shift wasn’t bad, as night shifts go, for which he is extremely grateful. No obstetric emergencies on the labour ward, only a couple of non-acute assessments from the ED, and he’d gotten a solid three hours of uninterrupted sleep in the ob-gyn call room before the nightmare had jolted him violently awake again. He really has no excuse for feeling like he’s been run over by a truck. He’s had far worse shifts in his time.

Just one more hour, he tells himself. He blinks hard, several times, and tries to focus on the screen again, but the brightness of it still stings his eyes to tears. It’s not going to happen. Defeated, he logs out and scoots his chair across to the main table in the middle of the room. The latest edition of Human Reproduction Update is there, already looking rather thumbed-through, and he takes it and props it up in front of his face. He doesn’t have the focus to even read anything in Korean right now, let alone in English, but at least it makes him look vaguely occupied if Chief Heo happens to glance in. He props his chin on his hand, and his eyes droop shut without him meaning them to.

“Hi, Jongdae,” a voice above him says. If it had been anyone else, it would have startled him, but this female voice is quiet and gentle and would be almost impossible to startle to. He opens his eyes and, for the first time in many hours, doesn’t have to struggle to find his smile. It’s Cho Soomin from the Employee Assistance Programme, otherwise known among the hospital staff as the “shrink service”. She’s in her late fifties, soft-spoken, with a plain, flat-cheekboned face and light brown eyes framed with smile lines. He rubs his eyes as she sits down on the empty chair beside him.

“How are you?” she asks, and really seems to care when she says it. Jongdae smiles back.

“Fine, thank you,” he says. He’s never responded any other way to Soomin. She’s a psychotherapist, and she turns up in the ob-gyn department about once a month. There are other psychotherapists in the shrink service, he’s vaguely aware from the flyer pinned up behind the printer with their photographs on it, but Soomin is the only one he’s ever actually seen, because she’s the one who wanders around the hospital, asking how people are doing, and making herself available to anyone who might want to talk. Jongdae has always thought this is a really nice idea. He’s sure a lot of people would rather have a casual chat with someone they’ve met before than a structured therapy session. Jongdae likes Soomin instinctively, and thinks there’s probably no other person in the world so suited to be a therapist, but he also thinks it must be exhausting always having to be the listener. That’s why, whenever she talks to him, Jongdae has always turned any questions directed towards his own wellbeing away and asked her about herself instead. He has a vague idea she’s aware he’s doing this, but she’s never called him out on it.

“How are you?” he asks now. “Is your daughter’s study going well?” He knows Soomin’s daughter is studying engineering. She tells him how her daughter is getting on, then asks after his own children.

“They’re fine,” Jongdae says. “Bodeul has started taekwondo as well now, and Chorong got her junior green stripe last week. Ahreum says they spend half their playtime practicing patterns together now.”

“That’s sweet,” Soomin smiles. They exchange a few more words, and then Soomin goes to talk to the fourth-year resident who is working on the other computer. Jongdae hides himself behind his journal again, folding his arms on the table to make a pillow for his aching head. He wants to see Chorong and Bodeul practice together. He’s half-serious when he wonders if they’ll forget his face if he doesn’t spend time with them soon. The soft conversation between Soomin and Hongki across the room fades into background noise. He’s just about fallen asleep right there at the table when a gentle touch on his shoulder brings him back. He lifts his head up sleepily and is surprised to see Soomin standing over him. She usually leaves when she’s said hi to everyone in the room. He looks around and finds that Hongki has vanished, leaving them alone.

He blinks up at her confusedly, and her eyes soften as she smiles.

“Hongki thought you might like to have a chat in private,” she says. “Would you like that? It’s entirely up to you, of course, but I have plenty of time if you do.”

Jongdae is completely taken aback. What has he done to make Hongki think that? He flips back through the last few days, trying to work it out, and his sudden alarm must reflect on his face, because Soomin sits down beside him again and puts a reassuring hand on his arm.

“It’s okay,” she says. “He said you’ve been doing extremely long hours lately and he was concerned about you. That’s all. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you a psychotherapist or a psychic therapist?” Jongdae jokes, mainly because he’s so unsure of himself. This is not a situation he’s ever found himself in before. He’s not the kind of person who people think needs therapy. He’s the one people come to for help.

Soomin laughs at his joke, but he suspects she’s just being kind. “Would you like to talk?” she asks him again.

Jongdae thinks about it. He’s been desperate to talk to someone, yes, but he’d been thinking about his friends, who’d listen to him rant and then joke him out of it, mess around with him and cheer him up. He’s never even dreamed of talking to a therapist. It makes things sound so serious. He doesn’t have the kind of problems that require therapy.

Then Jongdae thinks about how wound up and tense he feels all the time now. He thinks about how scared he is of lashing out at his children again. He thinks about how uncertain he feels over cases that would have been obvious to him this time last year, and about the sheer terror that floods through him every time he gets paged to an obstetric emergency, and how much he dreads losing another patient, dreads it so much that it seems to be taking over his life. He thinks of the nightmares where pregnant women bleed unrealistically and gruesomely to death in front of him, soaking both him and the operating room in blood, and his eyes go tight and distant. There’s silence for nearly a minute before he speaks.

“Yeah, actually,” he says, and his voice cracks a little. “I think I would like that.”

“Good for you," Soomin says, and there is genuine warmth in her voice, as if what he’s just said is some great achievement. “Tell you what, shall we go to your office? Less chance of someone walking in on us there, and I’d like to give you my full attention.”

Jongdae stands up to lead her down the corridor to his office. He’s about to sit behind his desk out of sheer force of habit, but Soomin looks towards the small area adjacent, where he has a couch against the wall, along with a toy box, a bright red beanbag, a kid-sized table with colouring books and crayons, and a road-map rug, all set up for the young children who are brought with their pregnant mothers to their prenatal appointments.

“Let’s talk there,” she suggests. “Seems more comfortable.”

Jongdae has barely ever sat on his own couch, but he follows her instruction and sits opposite her.

“What would you like to talk about?” she asks.

Jongdae is silent. There are so many things he’s been wanting to talk about, but somehow, he can’t quite find his way to them. When the silence has stretched a little, she prompts him. “How about you start with what you’re thinking now? What are you thinking instead of answering?”

“It’s not that I don’t know what to say,” he says. He laughs a little, embarrassed. “It’s because...look, this is going to sound really stupid.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t mind, even if it’s stupid.” And somehow, Jongdae believes her.

“It kind of feels like I’ve been pushing everything down so hard that now I’ve been given a chance to speak, I can’t do it,” he says. “I feel like I closed a cap on a bottle way too tight, and now I can’t undo it again.”

“What’s in the bottle?” Soomin asks.

“Fear,” Jongdae says, and blinks. It is not an answer he would have given if he’d given himself time to think.

“That’s a pretty scary thing to keep in a bottle,” Soomin says. “I can understand why you’d want to keep it closed tight.”

“I don’t want it to come out,” Jongdae’s voice has gone right down to a whisper. “But it does. No matter how hard I tighten the lid, it always wins.”

“When does it come out?”

“When I see a patient,” he says, then shakes his head. “No, not exactly. When I see a certain type of patient. She’s not one of my outpatients or my prenatal appointments. She’s in the emergency department and they’ve called me because she’s pregnant, that’s what they do when they see a pregnant patient in the ED, it’s standard practice. Anyway, my pager goes off, and I...” his throat tightens even at the thought, and he puts a hand to it. “You know how people say their blood turns to ice, well, I always thought it was exaggeration, but it actually does feel like that. I go cold, and I know, or I think I know, because of course I can’t really know at that stage, that she’s going to die. I go down there and I’m trying to stay calm because I need to think straight, I need to see clearly to do my job right and I’m in charge, I’m the specialist, they’ve called me to make sure she’s going to be okay and to save her if she’s not. It’s all on me, and I'm....I’m scared.” He’s shaking. He can hear it in his voice. It doesn’t sound like him at all. He never sounds like this.

“What happens then?”

“Well, I see the patient, and most of the time she’s fine. But I doubt myself. I’m scared I’ve missed something, and that if I send her home she’ll die and it will be my fault. Sometimes I call a consult when I don’t need to. I waste the time of other specialists and I feel terrible about it, but the fear is worse.”

“Have you always felt like this?” Soomin asks. Jongdae gasps out a laugh. It sounds a little wild.

“God, no. I wouldn’t have lasted long in this career if I did.”

“What’s changed, then?”

“Three mothers died,” he says. It’s not the first time he’s said it, so it’s not hard to say, but it doesn’t hurt any less for the repetition. “They all died in emergency surgery while I was the surgeon. None of them were my fault. I was cleared by my colleagues and at Morbidity and Mortality. But I can’t stop thinking that maybe, somehow, it was my fault. Or I had some role in it, at least. Maternal death is so rare these days. How could I lose three in three months?”

“And that’s made you doubt yourself?”

Jongdae nods. “I never used to be like this. I used to trust myself, but now...all I can think of is them bleeding out, dying beneath my hands. The nightmares, you wouldn’t believe…” he trails off, jaw and fists clenching alike. “And I just think....I can’t go through that again. I can’t lose a patient again. I can’t.”

“You really dread it,” Soomin says softly. Jongdae nods, now unable to speak. Fear is clenching around him, gripping him tight.

“Jongdae, I can see you’re feeling very agitated at the moment, so I’d like you to take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” Soomin says. “Breathe in as I count up to four, and out as I count down again.” Jongdae does as she says. He closes his eyes and follows her counting until his breathing has stabilized and the fear isn’t locking him quite so tight.

“Sorry,” he says, eyes still closed. “I’ve been a little stressed lately.”

“I can see that,” Soomin says, and there’s nothing but understanding in her voice. “This self-doubt, this fear, this dread you’re feeling, it’s been really hard on you. I’d really like to see if we can find a way to combat these symptoms and help you feel a little better.”

Jongdae opens his eyes and looks at her. “Symptoms?” he repeats.

She smiles. “Yes, symptoms. Just like your patients have. Their symptoms give you clues so that you can find the problem and treat it. Your symptoms do the same for me.”

Jongdae has never thought of fear as being a symptom. Calling it that seems to take a little of the awfulness from it, a little of the power. Fear is something vast and scary and uncontrollable, but symptoms...he understands symptoms. Symptoms can be dealt with.

“A couple of the things you said really stand out for me,” Soomin says. “It sounds to me like there’s a cognitive dissonance between what you know and what you feel. You said that you know there’s no reason to fear your patient is going to die just on hearing the sound of your pager, but all the same, you feel the fear. Does that sound right to you?”

Jongdae nods.

“Do you think that translates over all the situations you feel this fear in?”

“I think so,” Jongdae says, “because I never used to get this scared. It’s like it’s gotten control of me. I always used to talk to my friends when things were hard, and it helped me to take a step back and not get overwhelmed. But lately, the people I’m close to have been dealing with some pretty difficult stuff, and I couldn’t burden them with my problems. And I think maybe, because of that, because I never talked about it and just squashed it down inside me, it all sort of festered and grew and turned into this.... _thing_...and now I can’t handle it.” He laughs a little, embarrassed. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how it feels.”

“I think it sounds very logical,” Soomin says. “I think you’re a very clear-minded person, Jongdae, and you have a lot of self-awareness. Not many people are able to see the way their minds work this clearly. You are aware of your feelings and how they’re affecting you on an intellectual level. What you need to do now is work out how you can take control of the feelings so that they don’t overpower your logical thoughts. Does that sound like a good action plan?”

Jongdae looks at her a little wonderingly. “If you could teach me how to do that, it would be amazing,” he says. Soomin grins.

“Well, let’s give it a go, then.”

Soomin talks him through a couple of cognitive behavioural therapy techniques and how to use them when one of his “triggers” goes off - the pager beeping, the call for an assessment from the ED, the call for an emergency C-section from the labour unit. Jongdae gets the notepad from his desk and writes them down diligently. He’ll do anything to get himself functioning normally again. He knows he can’t go on like this for much longer. Then Soomin asks him something else, something that makes his head go up with surprise.

“You mentioned that you weren’t able to talk to your friends. I assume that you didn’t talk to your wife, either?”

“Of course not,” Jongdae says, a little horrified at the idea. “I’d never burden Ahreum with something like that. My wife, my kids…” he shakes his head. “They’re more precious to me than anything. They need to be safe and happy. I want them to see a smiling face, a strong husband, a good father. That’s who I am for them.”

“And so you don’t tell Ahreum when something’s difficult for you at work?”

Jongdae shakes his head. “Sometimes she can tell, to be honest,” he admits. “No matter how hard I try. Even yesterday, when I couldn’t go home because Chief Heo put me on call for the second night running, she could tell. She keeps asking me what's wrong, but I can’t let her see how bad it’s gotten.” He glances down, then up at Soomin again. “I guess I need to act better, or something.”

Soomin meets his eyes squarely. “It sounds to me like Ahreum would really like to help you,” she says. “Can you try looking at it from her point of view? She can see her husband is struggling, but he won’t tell her what’s wrong. She wants to help him, but he won’t let her in. Don’t you think that might make her sadder and more worried than if you were open with her?”

Jongdae stares at her. He has honestly never thought of it that way.

“I would like you to think about giving Ahreum a chance,” Soomin says. “Write it down there, along with the techniques I gave you. Pick one thing that you wouldn’t usually tell Ahreum about, and tell her, and see how it goes. If it ends badly, you never have to do it again. That can be your homework.” She smiles at him, and nods at his notebook.

Jongdae picks up his pen and writes, find a thing to tell Ahreum. He stares at the words, then up at Soomin. “But if I tell her something bad, it will hurt her,” he says, and to his utter horror, his eyes fill with tears. He blinks hurriedly, but he knows she’s seen them.

“I think she’s a lot stronger than you’re giving her credit for,” Soomin says. “I am a wife too, Jongdae. I would much rather my husband told me when he was struggling, than kept it all to himself, and broke someday. Wouldn’t you feel the same if Ahreum was keeping something like that from you?”

Jongdae nods, still trying to hold back his tears. “I just want her to be happy and not worry,” he whispers. “I don’t want to burden her with anything.”

“Give her a chance. Start with something small, something that doesn’t bother you as much. How about the reason for the extra-long shifts?”

Jongdae glances up, startled. He’d forgotten it had been Hongki’s worry over the ridiculous amount of hours he’s been doing that has gotten him into this situation in the first place.

“You want me to tell her Chief Heo physically backed me into a corner and emotionally blackmailed me into taking extra shifts?” he asks, a little incredulously. That doesn’t sound like a small thing to him, and apparently, it doesn’t sound like it to Soomin either, because he sees her eyes widen slightly. Jongdae suddenly realises what he’s just admitted. If it wouldn’t have been a childish thing to do, he would have facepalmed.

“Is that what happened?” Soomin asks. The flash of surprise he saw in her eyes is nowhere in her calm voice.

Jongdae looks away. He’s suddenly, achingly weary.

"Please," he says softly, “Let’s not go there.”

Soomin understands, or at least she sees that he’s done. He’s emotionally drained. He simply doesn't have the energy for anything more.

“Okay,” she says. “If you ever do want to go there, you know where to find me. If I’m not on the floor, come pay me a visit over in B block.” She fishes out her card and holds it out. He takes it numbly. “It gets lonely over there sometimes. A visit from a young, handsome doctor would go a long way to brighten things up." She smiles at him, and Jongdae finds a smile to send back despite his exhaustion.

“Let me know how the CBT goes,” she says, nodding again at the techniques he’s written down. “If you have any questions, just ask. And don’t forget to do your homework!”

Jongdae laughs in weary agreement, then leans back against the couch and watches her leave. As soon as she’s out of his office and the door is closed, he closes his eyes, pulls his knees to his chest and presses his face into them. He balls himself tight, seeking comfort in the closeness of his own body, the warmth of his own arms wrapped tight. That was hard. It was good though. Already the burden he’s been carrying feels a little lighter. Already there is less pressure in his chest, less fear of suddenly snapping like a too-tight coiled-up spring. Already he sees a glimmer of hope in the CBT techniques she’s given him to practice, to get a handle on his self-doubt and his fear. But it was still hard. He pulls himself a little tighter, and his fingers rub soothingly into his own shoulders, a lonely mimicry of the way Ahreum caresses him.

He’d give anything for a hug right now.


	21. March 21st

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first section of this chapter portrays severe mental illness and a mental health crisis. Please stay safe and skip it if you need to <3

During the time of slowly increasing bleakness before Baekhyun almost died, there were days where he would feel a strange sense of disconnect. It was like being in a glass bubble, where life went on around the outside of him but never touched him on the inside. Things were happening, he was doing things, but he felt so separate from reality it was like he didn’t really exist.

Now he feels like that almost all the time. He feels like everything has been drained out of him. The darkness he experienced, the whispering voices, the things his therapist tells him were hallucinations, they got to him during those days when he had sunk so low he couldn’t even move. They slipped into him and replaced his flesh with smoke, his bones with ashes. He feels like all the substance to him is gone, both inside and outside. He feels like a skeleton, something already long dead and buried, the earth pressing heavy, heavy around him.

In the beginning even just getting out of bed had been so impossible there was no point in even trying. Yeonseok had to physically help him sit up, help him dress, help him shower, half-carry him to the couch. It would be an hour’s work just getting Baekhyun through the task of eating a cup of thin soup, because his swallowing reflex seemed to have given up the ghost along with the rest of him. He was basically non-functional. The fact that he’s able to do all those things on his own now, at least most of the time, is what tells Baekhyun that despite how he feels, he is starting to get better. The medication is slowly working.

Baekhyun can get up when Yeonseok or Chanyeol tell him now. He can shower on his own, and it’s rare now that he gets so stuck standing aimlessly under the jet that one of them has to come in and pull him out again after half an hour. He can find clothes to get dressed in without them having to lay them out for him so that he doesn’t spend hours staring emptily into the wardrobe. And in addition to these tasks, which are really so basic Baekhyun doesn’t think he should be receiving the praise he gets for achieving them, he’s found something that he almost actually likes doing. There’s a window in the lounge where, if he stands by it, he can see down into the street five stories below. He likes to stand there and watch the people walking by, and the cars. It’s easier than watching TV, which is too loud, too busy, too full of things happening for him to be able to take in. Watching people through the glass is silent and calm. It doesn’t make him feel so overwhelmed he wants to crawl into some dark space and never come out again.

The sun shines in a clear blue sky as an elderly lady walks past with a younger woman, perhaps her daughter. Next come a couple of young teenage boys, snickering over a pack of cigarettes. They don’t look old enough to smoke. The thoughts about the people below him swim through him, bringing with them a faint sense that things might be interesting, if only he could break out of the glass bubble and exist as part of the world again.

In the last couple of weeks, he’s been getting brief glimpses of the possibility that one day, maybe, he might be able to do it. It’s like the glass bubble is getting a bit thinner, a bit less all-encompassing. His therapist seems pleased with his progress, and Baekhyun supposes the medication is doing its job. He can’t summon up any excitement about it, but somewhere among the emptiness there is the distant hope that things might get better again. He might not feel like this forever. He’s ill, and the medicine will help him. Maybe one day, he’ll be able to breathe out the smoke and shadows replacing his insides, let them flow out of his nose and mouth and eyes and ears and make room for happiness again.

Today, though...today feels strange. He feels strange. He leans his forehead against the window and has the odd sensation of registering something cold against his skin, but not actually feeling the coldness of it. He tries to figure out what the strange feeling is. It’s not the terrible bleakness pressing around him like dead earth so that even breathing feels hard, but it’s not one of the glimpses of normality that have been getting a little more frequent over the past few weeks either. He just feels...strange.

He turns away from the window and stares into the apartment. He’s spent the last two months here, doors open and safety measures making life a lot more inconvenient than it’s supposed to be, but he hasn’t complained. The rules and safety measures remind him that someone cares about him, cares enough to do these things to try and keep him safe. Baekhyun doesn’t really understand _why_ Chanyeol cares, but the evidence is there in the locked-away medications and the safety catches on the windows. Chanyeol cares enough that he doesn’t want Baekhyun to die.

He’s home alone for now, finally trusted over the past few weeks to not try and off himself in the half hour or so it will take Yeonseok to pick up groceries. But as Baekhyun looks around the lounge, he thinks it looks...weird. There’s something wrong. The shapes of things look strange, somehow. Or maybe it’s not that they look strange, it’s that they _feel_ strange. Different. It makes him feel uneasy, shivery on the inside. He doesn’t understand what he’s feeling. Has something changed in the apartment? Did they move something? Maybe that’s it. Maybe they changed something a bit and Baekhyun hasn’t been paying enough attention to his surroundings to realise what it is that’s come or gone.

He needs to figure it out. The wrongness he senses is making him feel floaty. He hates it.

He starts to shuffle slowly around the room. There are clusters of potted indoor trees, well-cared for with shiny leaves and moist soil. It has to be Yeonseok who cares for them, because it certainly can’t be Chanyeol. Once Baekhyun would’ve told Chanyeol so immediately upon seeing them, and Chanyeol would have been mock-offended and pretended to be hurt that Baekhyun didn’t appreciate his outstanding gardening skills, but truth be told, there would be no gardening skills at all, and Baekhyun would bask in the glory of being right once again. He stops in front of the trees and looks at them. He doesn’t think there are any new ones or any missing. For a while, he gets caught in tracing the latticed trunk of the ornamental fig, fingertips stroking the smooth bark, but the wrongness is nagging at him, and he moves on.

There are DVDs on the shelf underneath the TV. Those are Chanyeol’s. Baekhyun looks at them. He doesn’t know if there are any new ones, but the wrongness is more than the addition of a few new DVDs. That wouldn’t make everything feel so strange. The books in the shelf beside it are probably Yeonseok’s, because Baekhyun doesn’t remember Chanyeol caring for Murakami’s melancholic literature, or indeed caring for literature at all. He takes another step and looks at the games abandoned by the dusty playstation. They are a mix of old and new. The one lying on the top of the playstation is Call of Duty. Baekhyun remembers playing that against Kyungsoo and having his ass thoroughly kicked when he’d just started in residency. Something touches his lips, a ghost of a smile, but it doesn’t last long.

With his eyes tilted down, the rug catches his eyes and mind. It’s old, like something from a grandparent’s home. The colours are muted, but it has a lot of patterns. Baekhyun has never particularly noticed it before, but now the patterns seem to leer at him, weird and disjointed and senseless. He can’t make sense of them. The patterns have no meaning at all. They seem to grow and twist in his vision, tug at his chest. His head spins. How has he not noticed these patterns before? It feels like they’re bad things, evil things, calling him somewhere he doesn’t know, somewhere outside of himself, different and terribly wrong. He’s going to lose himself. This rug, these patterns, they’re going to take him somewhere he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to go…

He tears his eyes from the rug and takes a step forward, clings to the bookshelf, panting a little. This isn’t real. The rug isn’t real. No, the rug is real, the patterns aren’t real. The evilness of them is not real. They are just patterns. They do not leer at him. They do not move. Baekhyun has to connect with something real. He stares at the first thing that comes to his eyes, the spine of a book, white hangul on red. He reads the words _Norwegian Wood_ and _Murakami_ and reads them and re-reads them over and over and over again, desperately focusing on the letters. He feels so strange. So sick. But letters are real. The blocky shapes of them are real. Baekhyun is real.

His breathing calms. The wrongness trying to steal him his soul subsides into the corners and seeps away. The relief is so great Baekhyun almost goes to his knees with it. He clings to the bookshelf and closes his eyes. He’s shaking, but the sick feeling inside him is nearly gone, and he’s just so, so relieved.

When Baekhyun opens his eyes again, he sees a framed photograph on the bookshelf, a little below his eye level. One person in the photo is Chanyeol, his hair a little longer and dyed light brown. That’s the way he’d worn it about three years ago, if Baekhyun remembers rightly. The other is Yeonseok, proud in his uniform showing off a promotion emblem. Baekhyun looks at the photograph. Both men’s faces are glowing with happiness and Chanyeol’s arm is slung around Yeonseok’s shoulders.

This picture was not there before. Baekhyun is almost sure. He would have noticed it before, wouldn’t he? He doesn’t completely trust his own memory, and he knows he hasn’t been exactly observant lately, but he has lived here for nearly two months. He would have seen it, wouldn’t he? He grips the bookshelf a little harder. Is this what was wrong? Not the patterns on the rug, after all? Did Chanyeol and Yeonseok put new photos up?

There’s another photo on the shelf above. He has to stand on tiptoe to see it properly. This one seems more recent. Chanyeol is carrying Yeonseok on his back, shirts with flower prints contrasting their sun-kissed skin, tropical foliage in the background. Baekhyun cannot remember Chanyeol telling him about going somewhere tropical. He starts to feel weird again. Shivery again. Is he losing his mind? Chanyeol is his best friend. Surely he would have told Baekhyun about going overseas. He loves to talk about things like that. He would have shown Baekhyun photos, videos, told him stories about the funny and ridiculous things that always seem to happen to Chanyeol. What...what is going on?

Feeling sick again, Baekhyun drags his eyes from the photo and is immediately caught by the rug. The patterns. Why is this rug so evil? But it’s not evil. Baekhyun knows it’s not really evil, it’s not really the rug. He’s being ridiculous, but he feels like he’s being turned inside out and it’s hard to believe it’s not real when it just feels, it feels so real. He wants it to stop. It has to stop, has to, has to stop.

He goes to his hands and knees on the rug, trembling, teeth gritted against the sickness inside him. It terrifies him to get closer to the patterns, but he needs to force himself, needs to show himself, convince himself that the rug is just a rug and the patterns cannot hurt him. He presses his right hand in a fist to his chest to try and keep himself from floating away and begins to trace the patterns with the fingertips of his left hand. He watches his fingers tracing the patterns and feels the roughness of the carpet against his skin. They are just patterns. Just patterns in an antique rug. They cannot hurt him. He’s okay. He’s okay.

The wrongness slips away from him again. The patterns are just patterns. The rug is just a rug. Baekhyun isn’t being lifted and floated away and out of it all. He sobs, a dry sob, more like a spasm, his stomach hurting as all his muscles clench. His trembling lessens. His breathing comes easier as the relief settles calm over him. Things feel normal again, but he keeps pressing his fist to his chest and keeps tracing the patterns in the rug anyway. It feels safer than trying to do anything else. He doesn’t know what might set him off again. It’s safer not to look, not to think, when everything carries this sense of danger.

He hears the front door opening as if from a very great distance. Yeonseok is home. He hears the sound of him putting the rustling bags on the kitchen bench, hears footsteps approaching him, though he cannot look up. He’s locked in again, gotten stuck, and he can only trace and trace.

“Baekhyun?” Yeonseok asks. Baekhyun senses, rather than sees, Yeonseok crouch down in front of him. He catches Baekhyun’s hand, stilling it in his tracing. “Come on, now, you know this isn’t good for you,” Yeonseok says gently. He reaches for Baekhyun’s other hand, the one clenched in a fist to his chest. “Let’s get up, okay?”

Baekhyun lets Yeonseok pull his hand away from his chest and help him to his feet. He’s so relieved Yeonseok is back. Things feel so much less scary when there’s another person here. Yeonseok leads him to the couch and sits him on it. He knows the couch. The couch doesn’t feel different. It feels safe. Baekhyun tries to say thank you to Yeonseok for saving him, but the way to his voice feels so, so far that he despairs of ever reaching it. Giving up on the words, he looks up at Yeonseok, forcing himself to make eye contact. He’s supposed to be getting better, not being such a burden. He tries to say thank you with his eyes.

Yeonseok is looking a little worried as he looks at Baekhyun. “Do you feel really bad today?”

Baekhyun gazes at him. He doesn’t really know what to call how he feels. It’s an all-over inside ache, but it’s not really something physical. It’s what happens when you’re a skeleton, dust and ashes for your bones. After a while, Yeonseok sighs a little, turns and goes back into the kitchen to put the groceries away.

Yeonseok returns a few minutes later. “Hey, Baekhyun?” Baekhyun looks up at him again, and Yeonseok holds out a book. “Chanyeol told me you liked to read manhwas in med school. I thought you might like this one. It used to be my favourite when I was younger.”

He holds the book in front of Baekhyun, and Baekhyun takes it automatically. He looks down to see a black and white cover, the title Catharsis. He recalls how he’d staved off the first awful feeling by reading the title of the Murakami book, and shoves the memory away quickly in case it catches him again. Reading is good. Letters are good and strong and real. How did Yeonseok know?

He should say thank you, but his words didn’t work last time and Baekhyun is too tired to try again. Still, maybe he can show Yeonseok his gratitude. He curls up into the corner of the couch, opens the first page and glances back up at Yeonseok. Yeonseok smiles at him with a little of the same happiness Baekhyun recognises from the photos he’s just seen, so Baekhyun looks back at the page and starts reading.

He’s barely aware of Yeonseok cleaning the apartment or Chanyeol arriving home. He sinks into the words, the pictures, focuses on them as intensely as he can, gets lost in them, and for a while Baekhyun doesn’t feel sick or sad. It takes him a while to read, longer than it should, because sometimes he stares for too long at the pictures and words without being able to take in their meaning.

It takes him all afternoon, but when he’s nearing the last few pages, something from outside the book catches at his attention. He stops reading and tunes into the conversation Chanyeol is having with Yeonseok near the computer desk behind the couch. They’re talking about a party or a gathering of friends, but that’s not what’s interesting. There’s a tenderness to Chanyeol’s voice, a sense of great affection. It reminds Baekhyun of the way he used to talk to Nari.

“Okay, love,” Chanyeol says, and then he’s turning away from Yeonseok and towards Baekhyun. _Love?_ Baekhyun thinks blankly, but Chanyeol’s attention is on him and he fixes his eyes on a picture at random. Chanyeol drops onto the couch next to him. Baekhyun can feel him watching him, giving him the chance to acknowledge his presence, but he ignores it, his eyes starting to dry out as he reads the same speech-bubble over and over without making any sense of it. Chanyeol wants to talk, and the energy required for conversation is just so, so impossible.

Eventually Chanyeol leans closer and pokes his shoulder, his shadow making it harder to read the text.

“What are you reading?”

Baekhyun folds the manhwa over to show him the cover. Chanyeol smiles and taps it a couple of times. “I really liked that one. Do you like it?”

Baekhyun nods, and Chanyeol seems oddly pleased with his non-verbal communication. Baekhyun just doesn’t understand how Chanyeol can keep going. He would’ve gotten sick of himself many weeks ago. Chanyeol starts to talk about the parts of the manhwa he liked best, and Baekhyun finds his eyes drawn up to watch his friend’s face. How do you do it, he wonders as Chanyeol chatters on. How are you such a good person? Chanyeol, for his part, seems perfectly happy to babble on, despite that Baekhyun isn’t finding a way to respond. He watches the different expressions cross Chanyeol’s face with fascination. He’s not even really understanding what Chanyeol is saying. It’s just interesting to watch his face, and the deep tones of his voice are soothing.

After a few minutes Yeonseok calls for Chanyeol from his bedroom. When the bedroom door closes behind them, Baekhyun puts the manhwa on the coffee table and stands up to go to the computer desk. He’d gotten distracted from figuring out what was wrong earlier and the strange feeling is growing around him again. He has to figure it out. The desk is cluttered. One side is piled with printed-out medical studies, and on the other side someone has been using a metal ruler and pencils to draft out some kind of table or roster. That must be Yeonseok, something related to police work. None of it gives him any further clues to the strangeness that’s hovering at the edge of everything.

Baekhyun turns to look somewhere else, but before he can step away from the desk the door to the bedroom opens. Baekhyun sees interlocked fingers slowly slipping from each other as Yeonseok leaves the bedroom. The world seems to tunnel and stretch away from him, reeling and distant, and Baekhyun knows.

He is so stupid. How did he never see it until now? Of course Chanyeol and Yeonseok are not flatmates. They’re together. Partners. Lovers.

It all makes sense. The pictures on the shelves. The pet names whispered in hushed corners. All the time spent together in the bedroom. Words begin to seep from the walls and whisper at him. Chanyeol and Yeonseok are together. And they didn’t tell Baekhyun. Not only that. They hid it. They pretended. Lied.

Baekhyun feels like he’s been shoved into ice water. His thoughts start spiraling out of control faster than they have done in weeks. He doesn’t understand. No, he doesn’t want to understand. He doesn’t want to listen to the cruel words leaching from the walls to hiss around him, stroking his edges, looking for a way in. But he should listen. They’re only telling him the truth. _You’re bad,_ they whisper. _You're wrong. Look what you’ve done. You’ve forced them to hide in their own apartment, just because of you. You’re so wrong they couldn’t trust you. Your best friend lied to you, and why would he do that, if there wasn’t something terribly wrong with you? Of course they hid their love from you. Nobody could ever trust you. Nobody could ever love you._

He knows it’s true. Nari taught him that. And now Chanyeol, too.

Everything is going strange. The walls are wrong. The shapes of things. They loom and leer at him, and the voices just keep whispering. There’s a taste of ash and acid in his mouth. _You’re an intruder,_ they tell him. _A burden. Nobody wants you. Nobody could ever want you. You crashed into their happy lives and made them have to hide. You shouldn’t be here. A person like you shouldn’t even exist._

Maybe that’s why he feels so detached. So different, so separate, so unreal. He feels like he doesn’t exist because he shouldn’t exist. He’s out of place in the world and it wants him out of it.

Baekhyun stands frozen to the floor, unseeing. Of course. It all makes sense. There’s something inherently wrong about him, that makes people not trust him, not love him, need to get away from him. Hate him. They all hate him, Baekhyun knows it, and the worst part is they’re right to. His therapist has been trying to convince him otherwise and Baekhyun was slowly starting to believe, but no, she was wrong after all. It is all him.

The wrongness around him hisses. His skin crawls where it touches him. He’s scared. He’s so, so scared. He wants to scream. He can feel them coming for him, the things, the thoughts, taking on forms in the darkness and crowding him, clouding him. Everything is looming wrong, and the walls, the walls are melting. No, he wants to cry, no, please, not again, not again - but he can feel them, he can feel them coming for him...

“Baekhyun?” A strong voice cuts through the darkness. A pair of concerned eyes staring at him, forehead frowning. “Are you okay?”

He wants to say no, but he can’t. He’s locked in, trapped. His knees feel weak. Besides, the things hiss, what right does he have to ask for help? That’ll only burden Chanyeol more than ever. Without Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Yeonseok won’t have to hide their relationship. Without him around, things will be normal and good. _You should disappear,_ the words sink like smoke into his skin, _you’re nothing but a burden and all you do is cause suffering wherever you go._

Strong hands grab onto his shoulders and shake him gently.

“Wake up,” Chanyeol says. He sounds alarmed, alarmed enough to make Baekhyun’s eyes slide to Chanyeol, but he can’t really even see him. He opens his mouth and tries to form words, but there aren’t any words, only hissing noises all around him, and the looming dark.

Terror strikes Baekhyun then. He remembers what he was told. Psychotic, his therapist had said. He had psychotic depression. Even in Baekhyun’s most distant state those words had struck him deep and hard, because they’d sounded so scary. Is that what’s happening to him? Is he having another episode? Is it happening again? No. He can’t stand it. He can’t go through this again. He can’t. He’s so scared, so scared. He wants it to stop.

Chanyeol is holding his shoulders. It hurts. He’s not aware of how hard his fingers are digging into his skin. It’ll leave bruises but Baekhyun doesn’t care, because the walls, the walls are melting. Chanyeol is looking over his shoulder and calling for Yeonseok, and Baekhyun doesn’t even think. His hand just reaches out on its own and snatches up the metal ruler from the computer desk, and then he’s digging the sharp corner into his own wrist and dragging sharp and hard, and there’s a terrible noise of ripping.

“Baekhyun!” Chanyeol shouts. He grabs Baekhyun’s hands and tries to pull the ruler out of his grip. Usually Chanyeol is far stronger than Baekhyun and would be able to do this easily, but desperation has lent Baekhyun strength and they struggle over the ruler while blood bubbles up around Baekhyun’s wrist. “Yeonseok, help me!” Chanyeol yells, and then there are two of them, and Baekhyun starts to lose the battle. The ruler is wrenched from his hand. Someone grabs both his wrists and crosses them over his chest. He’s pulled backwards and down, held in someone’s lap with his back against their chest. It’s Yeonseok, because Chanyeol is in front of him, eyes wide and lips moving with words Baekhyun can’t hear. He struggles and thrashes wildly but he doesn’t have a chance. Yeonseok has him wrapped tight from behind in a hold he can’t escape from and Chanyeol is sitting on his legs, pinning them to the ground. Baekhyun is terrified. He’s beyond terrified and into mindless, primal panic. The things will get him. He wants to scream, he needs to scream, but he can’t he can’t he can’t...

There’s someone speaking into his ear. Not one of the scary voices. A calm voice, deep and gentle. He feels the warmth of it sink in. “You’re safe,” he hears. “I know it’s scary, I know you’re scared but you’re safe, Baekhyun, you’re okay. We’ve got you. You’re safe.”

The words repeat and Baekhyun latches onto them. Yeonseok is holding him. Chanyeol has his legs. They’re holding him down, and suddenly Baekhyun realises just how hard he’s fighting. Why? Why is he fighting? It’s terror, he’s afraid, he’s so afraid of the dark and the things in it, but he shouldn’t fight Chanyeol and Yeonseok. They’re his friends, they want to help him. He’s going to hurt them if he fights like this.

He shudders and goes limp. He feels slippery terror all around him, but he won’t risk hurting them, he can’t. Yeonseok is still speaking, the voice close to his ear. “You’re safe. Be calm. You’re safe.”

Slowly the way they’re restraining his body starts to feel less terrifying and more like a sense of security. He starts to hear his own breathing. It’s ragged. But the darkness isn’t trying to suffocate him anymore. It’s lifting. The creatures in it are swimming away. The walls are not melting. Chanyeol is looking into his eyes. He’s got a look on his face Baekhyun recognizes, professional calm hiding raw worry beneath it.

“His pupils have blown wide,” he’s saying to Yeonseok. “It’s the fight or flight response. Can you handle him if I go get the benzodiazepine?”

“No -” Baekhyun chokes out. Chanyeol’s eyes snap to his face. “I don’t - need -”

“Baekhyun, are you with us?” Chanyeol asks, calm but intent. Baekhyun nods. It’s easier than speaking. He’s shaking badly, but not the frenzied thrashing of before.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I just, they were coming, I was so scared -”

“I can get you the benzo, if you want,” Chanyeol says, but Baekhyun shakes his head. He doesn’t want it. It’ll only sedate him, and he doesn’t need that now he’s calming, and he’s sick of drugs, and things are getting normal again. He’s okay. He is.

“I won’t fight,” he whispers. Yeonseok’s tight hold of him cautiously loosens a little, then, when Baekhyun does nothing but sit there and tremble, loosens a little more, allowing Chanyeol to take his wrist and inspect the mess he’s made of it with the ruler. Baekhyun looks at it too, numbly. It’s bleeding sluggishly, but it’s more messy than deep.

“It’s not too bad,” Chanyeol confirms, and lets out a long breath.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun says. Shame curdles inside him, making him want to curl up and hide. He chokes on his words. They taste of ashes, but he has to get them out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Yeonseok says. Baekhyun is passed over into Chanyeol’s arms like he’s a child. Chanyeol wraps his arms around him tightly.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “You’re safe.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes. He’s utterly exhausted. The words have gone, the terror retreated. He won’t think of the thing that triggered him. He can’t, at least not yet. He can’t deal with it, he can’t go through that again. He’s awful and selfish, but right now, he just needs Chanyeol hugging him and telling him everything’s okay.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and starts to cry. He sobs into Chanyeol’s chest, feels the warm vibration of soothing words, though he can’t take in what’s being said. Eventually his tears stop, and he lies limply in Chanyeol’s arms, just feeling the safety of someone holding him close.

His wrist is bandaged up tidily when he opens his eyes again. He hears Chanyeol tell Yeonseok he missed his calling as a doctor, and Yeonseok laughingly reply that Chanyeol knows he’d go crazy if he didn’t have a job involving physical activity. He looks up at Chanyeol, and feeling him move, Chanyeol smiles down at him, running fingers over his hair. They’re still sitting on the floor beside the computer desk, but Yeonseok must have taken the ruler away.

“Do you think you can get up?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun nods, so Chanyeol helps him stand. He clings to Chanyeol’s shirt and breathes until the head-rush fades. He’s so tired. He looks longingly towards his bedroom, but Chanyeol shakes his head.

“Dinner first,” he says, and Baekhyun doesn’t have the energy to argue.

Chanyeol guides him through the apartment towards the kitchen and pushes him gently into a chair. When the food arrives it smells stronger than ever before and he almost gags. He can’t eat tonight, there’s just no way.

Chanyeol doesn’t seem to care about the food. He puts two pills and a glass of water in front of Baekhyun and looks at him expectantly. They’re his regular antidepressants, not the benzodiazepine, and Baekhyun knows he has to take them. He reaches for the pills. It takes an immense effort to lift his hand towards his mouth. He shudders convulsively, his body rejecting the idea of swallowing even before he gets the pills in his mouth, and he clenches his fist around them.

“I’ll be sick,” he whispers. Chanyeol looks at him sympathetically, but shakes his head.

“You have to take them. You know you do.” He puts a large hand on Baekhyun’s back and holds it there. The pressure seems to help a little. “Take a deep breath. You can do it.”

Baekhyun closes his eyes. Chanyeol is right, he has to take them. Today’s episode has shown him that. He needs his medication so that terrible things like this will stop happening to him.

He puts the pills into his mouth and reaches for the glass of water to help him swallow them. He takes a small sip and presses a fist against his mouth as he struggles with his uncooperative swallow reflex. It takes him nearly a minute before he manages to gulp them down. His stomach lurches violently, but the pills don’t return. He leans forward and puts his head on the table. Everything feels awful. Not only is his mind hurting him, his body is too.

Chanyeol’s hand moves to the back of his neck, massaging gently with one hand while he eats with the other, chatting to Yeonseok across the table. Slowly Baekhyun’s nausea retreats, until he thinks he’s not going to throw up after all, which is good, because he needs the meds.

By the time he gets his head off the table Yeonseok and Chanyeol are nearly done with their meals. Baekhyun shakes his head when Yeonseok asks if he can try eating something. He leaves the table when Chanyeol nods at him. He doesn’t go straight into his bedroom to fall asleep, even though he’s tired, because he’s still a little scared. He doesn’t want to be alone, not even with the door open. Instead he returns to the living room. The quilted blanket is comforting as he huddles under it into the corner. After a while, he reaches for Catharsis. He knows what happens now, but maybe that’s why he wants to read it again. He can disappear into a fictional world that will always be the same, where his feelings don’t exist. He can be Leon Mori for the rest of the evening and push everything else away.

As the evening wears on, the sun sets and the apartment is lit up by artificial light. Yeonseok pulls the curtains halfway down to prevent the darkness from creeping in. The coffee brewer sends the scent of coffee around in the apartment. Baekhyun hears Chanyeol looking for ice cream in the freezer. It’s still cold outside but Chanyeol has always liked ice cream. Baekhyun likes ice cream too. It never mattered that it was winter, they’d seek out the freezers outside convenience stores and make their mouths go as numb as their fingers around strawberry melona or traffic light ice pops.

He goes back to the book until the couch dips. He lifts his eyes and looks at Chanyeol.

“Feeling better?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun thinks about it, then nods.

“That’s good,” Chanyeol smiles at him. He hesitates before continuing. “Maybe this isn’t the best time, but I don’t know if there’s ever really a good time, and I was planning to tell you this today and I don’t want to put it off, because it’s really important.” He’s babbling a little, the way he does when he gets nervous. Baekhyun bites the inside of his cheek. Why is Chanyeol nervous? Has he any reason to be nervous?

Of course. This is it. Baekhyun’s a burden and they want him out of the way, of course they do. Who would want someone who is so unstable that they hurt themselves in front of them? Who would want someone who causes them that kind of stress? Who would want someone they have to hide their relationship from in their own home? Of course Chanyeol has to tell him he can no longer live with him. Baekhyun ruins everything. Nari couldn’t stand him and now he’s ruined things even with Chanyeol. Not even such a good person as Chanyeol can stay with Baekhyun.

“Are you listening?” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun can’t even nod this time, but Chanyeol seems able to tell that he is listening. He takes a deep breath and Baekhyun’s fingers wrap tight into the blanket. He’s caused enough trouble for them. He has to stay calm and take this like an adult, even though he feels like screaming.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” Chanyeol says. “I’m really sorry for not trusting you with this before. For years I’ve been hiding my true self and I was so afraid of being rejected that I thought hiding was better. But it’s not and I know that now. Yeonseok isn’t my flatmate.” He takes a shaky breath. “He’s...my boyfriend.”

The wall clock ticking in the kitchen can be heard in the living room. Baekhyun waits for the rest, the parts where Chanyeol tells him he’s an awful person, to get out and that he won’t be missed. Chanyeol doesn’t say more, though. He just glances at Baekhyun, nervously, like he’s waiting for a response, waiting for a sign. Baekhyun isn’t entirely sure what kind of sign to give him.

“You w-want me to leave, right?” he prompts eventually. It’s more of a whisper, and his throat feels tight. “Just say it. I understand...” but his voice breaks, making a liar of him.

Chanyeol’s eyes widen. “What? Of course not! Why would I want you to leave?”

Baekhyun stares back at him. Is this some kind of trick question? Why would Chanyeol want him to stay, is the real question. “Because...I...I am a burden?” It comes out like a question, and his shoulders hunch. Chanyeol shakes his head and reaches over to pull him close, and despite himself Baekhyun presses closer, desperately seeking comfort for the ache in his heart.

“No, you’re not a burden at all. You could never be that,” Chanyeol says. “You’re my best friend, Baekhyun, and I’ll stick with you no matter what.”

“Then...why...” Baekhyun tries to find his way through the conversation. His head feels fuzzy. “Don’t you want me out of the way?”

“Of course not,” Chanyeol smiles at him, but there’s concern in his eyes.

“But you didn’t tell me before, about you and Yeonseok. You had to pretend he’s your flatmate because of me,” Baekhyun says slowly, trying to reason it out. “If I wasn’t here...you wouldn’t have to pretend?”

“Oh, Baekhyun, it’s not that at all.” Chanyeol looks so sad. “It was all my fault. My parents were vocally anti-homosexuality when I was a teenager, so I never told them, and it became a habit to hide. I’ve been terrified of people finding out and hating me for years. It’s only in the past couple of months I realised I didn’t want to hide who I am forever. Jongdae said… no, it was what he didn’t say, really, that made me realise I needed to trust my friends and give them a chance, instead of making that decision for them.”

Baekhyun stares at him until he connects what Chanyeol just said with its meaning.

“You told Jongdae about Yeonseok before me?” he asks, and his lips automatically form a pout.

“I didn’t actually mean to tell him. It was only a couple of months ago, when I had measles. I was delirious and accidentally outed myself,” Chanyeol explains. Baekhyun huffs and looks away, pouting hard as he feigns offense. Chanyeol looks alarmed for a second until Baekhyun meets his eye again and manages a tiny mischievous smirk. A procession of shock, relief, and then mirth crosses Chanyeol’s face, and he starts to laugh. It’s the first time Baekhyun has made Chanyeol laugh in many months, and a tiny bubble of warmth makes its way up from inside his chest to make his own smile grow. It’s not a laugh, not yet, but it’s definitely a genuine smile.

Chanyeol’s laughter subsides and he speaks again. “So, are you...are you okay with me being…” he swallows, as if the words are hard to say. “With me being gay? It’s probably a shock, I know, but -”

Baekhyun’s smile touches his lips again. “I already knew,” he says.

Chanyeol’s jaw drops. He stares at Baekhyun, shocked into silence.

“You...you knew?” he echoes after a while. He sounds hoarse.

“Sure,” Baekhyun says. “I figured it out in our first year of college. I wondered if you’d bring it up someday, but you never did.” He shrugs. “It never mattered, anyway. You’re you, Chanyeol. You’re my best friend.”

Chanyeol looks like Baekhyun has just turned his entire world upside down, so Baekhyun decides not to say any more, at least not until his friend has got his head on straight again. He shifts on the couch, and leans against Chanyeol’s shoulder. They’re joined by Yeonseok a couple of minutes later, who turns on the TV. Yeonseok sits on the other side of the couch and reaches over to take Chanyeol’s hand, and Chanyeol relaxes back onto the couch. Baekhyun closes his eyes as the other two watch the TV. He’s so tired, but he’s so relieved. The voices lied. Chanyeol wasn’t hating him after all. He trusted Baekhyun today. He still wants Baekhyun for his best friend.

Baekhyun knows he still has a long way to go, but for now he feels safe and loved and present, the physical contact reaching through his glass bubble and keeping him here and now. He made Chanyeol laugh, and he smiled - twice! - without having to try. Perhaps there will be an end to all this, after all. Perhaps one day.

\---

Sehun hates being alone. He hates being lonely. Loneliness is heavy. Loneliness makes him ache even when he’s surrounded by people. Sometimes it’s even worse then, because none of them are the person he really wants.

Life before Mikyung had been grey. He’d studied hard, got perfect grades, gone to medical school and won a residency in one of the most competitive specialties. He was a success. He’d fulfilled all his parents' expectations, grown into a son they could be proud of. Yet the more Sehun achieved, the more this thought would creep up from the hollow place inside him: if this is what success is, why don’t I feel happy?

Then Mikyung had found him. Her smile had been like the sun breaking through a lifetime’s worth of clouds. She taught him that hearts need more than perfect grades and successful careers, and the emptiness in Sehun had been filled.

Now his sunshine girl is far away, and sometimes Sehun wonders if it’s ever going to stop raining.

Lately he’s been wondering what would become of him if she left him for real. He honestly doesn’t think he would survive being thrust back into the greyness that was life before Mikyung. He knows it’s silly to worry about this kind of thing. Mikyung isn’t going to leave him, and even if she did it wouldn’t be without fair warning, but lately Sehun is finding this harder to remember. It’s hard when his apartment is always too tidy and too quiet and too empty (and it’s not the emptiness that is the problem, it’s a specific emptiness of Mikyung). It’s hard when the nights seem to last forever, because all he can think about is how it had felt to fall asleep with Mikyung in his arms every night, and how it feels now, to lie awake without her. She’s not there anymore to catch him when the crease between his eyebrows gets too deep and his eyes go distant and his mind chases thoughts down rabbit holes, burrowing deeper and deeper.

His thoughts are chasing too deep now. He’s wondering if Mikyung misses him the same way he misses her. Most of him hopes she isn’t, because the idea of his sunshine girl being this sad is almost physically painful, but a small, secret, selfish part of him hopes she is. Because if she isn’t missing him with this constant ache that sometimes feels like a hole in his stomach and sometimes feels like chains wrapping around his ribs and sometimes feels like a hand choking his throat - then maybe that means she’s happy enough without him, down there in the southern beach city. Maybe she’s satisfied with the job of her dreams and a handsome, broad-shouldered colleague who takes her surfing whenever she wants. Maybe that’s enough for her. She’s not like Sehun, who only really started living at the age of twenty-four. She’s always been a happy person. She’s got sunshine in her soul.

Sehun has always known he needs Mikyung quite a lot more than she needs him.

He’s interrupted by the dermatology cell phone ringing on his desk, and coming out of his thoughts feels like his head breaking the surface of dark water. He breathes with some relief, because that last thought had not been a pleasant one at all. He picks the phone up and slides his thumb across the screen.

“You’ve reached the on-call dermatologist,” he says. “Oh Sehun speaking.” He’s been on-call for the past three days, but for dermatology this isn’t a demanding duty. Dermatological emergencies are rare, and he doesn’t have to stay in the hospital like many other specialists do. His chief rosters them in long chunks because it’s simpler, and Sehun will often be on-call for a week or more straight before having his life interrupted by an emergency case.

“Min Jiyong here, emergency department,” the voice on the other end of the line is young and male. “I have a three-year-old girl here with previously diagnosed chickenpox. Her parents say she’s been rapidly worsening over the past two days. She has a high fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, which aren’t unheard of for chickenpox, but there’s also severe pain and discoloration of the rash, and I’m not convinced it’s a normal chickenpox rash. Would you come and have a look?”

“Sure,” Sehun says. “I’ll be there in ten.” His outpatients for the day are all done, and he was supposed to be finishing his incredibly boring documentation before he’d drifted off into less-than-happy places in his mind. The ED case is a welcome distraction. “Did you contact the on-call paediatrician?” he asks as he logs out of the record system. Unusual rashes are one thing, but extremely sick three-year-olds are another entirely, and not something Sehun wants the responsibility of dealing with.

“That’s next on my list,” the ED resident says, so Sehun hangs up and grabs his white coat from where he’s tossed it over the back of the chair. He rolls down his shirt sleeves and shoves his arms into the coat, not bothering with the navy thick-knit jersey he’d arrived in. He wasn’t overheating when he'd taken it off , but the temperature-controlled hospital environment had felt particularly stuffy today, like he was trying to breathe cotton wool, and it had made him want to shed as many layers as he could get away with. It still hadn't stopped the sensation of chains being wrapped around his chest and slowly tightening.

Sehun leans against the wall in the staff elevator and rubs at his sternum. He knows the sensation is all in his mind, but knowing that doesn’t make it go away.

He’s lucky with the elevator, scoring an uninterrupted ten-storey swoop to the ground floor, and arrives in the ED in half of the ten minutes he’d promised Dr. Min. He approaches the nursing station and tries to look like he belongs here and knows what he’s doing, but the chaotic air is already putting him on edge. It’s always like this down here, so very different to the tranquility of the tenth floor. Some people thrive in noise and chaos, but Sehun is not one of those people. He approaches the nursing station and gets what can only be termed as a glare from the sharp-looking woman behind it. His eyes drop to her name-tag as his face goes blank in reflexive self-defense.

“Room thirteen,” Nurse Seo snaps. Her eyes have slid across his own name-tag at the same time he was reading hers. He doesn’t even get a chance to respond before she’s turning away to order some more staff around. Sehun swallows.

“Uh, where is…” he starts, then changes his mind. It’s clear everyone here is very busy. He’ll find room thirteen on his own. He spins around to search for directional signs, then is forced to back up against the wall as a crowd of staff rushing a patient on a wheeled gurney fly past. His eyes are distracted by following their speeding progress down the hall.

“Alright there, Sehun?” The voice is deep, and Sehun jumps slightly, but the face he looks a little up into is familiar and friendly.

"Hey, Chanyeol,” he replies. “Are you here for the chickenpox patient too?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol nods, smiling at him, and Sehun feels the chains around his chest loosen a little. “Did you find out where she is?”

“Room thirteen, apparently,” Sehun tells him, “though where that actually is, I have no idea.”

Chanyeol’s smile gets wider. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks it’s worse than a labyrinth down here,” he says. “Will you join me on a heroic quest for room thirteen, Sehun? Fair warning, though,” he casts a side-eye at Nurse Seo barking orders from the nursing station a couple of metres away. “There may be dragons.”

Sehun puts his hand over his mouth to cover his laugh. “Let’s go the other way,” he suggests. “It looks less dangerous.”

It’s too noisy to converse as they follow the corridor. Sehun is used to being one of the taller people around, and though Chanyeol only has a couple of centimetres on him, his shoulders are much broader, so Sehun tucks in a little behind him. It’s a lot easier to get through the corridors behind Chanyeol, the combination of his height and confidence making people automatically move for him, rather than the other way around. In this way they swiftly reach a T-junction, where Sehun is glad to see a glossy sign board with arrows fixed to the wall. It says:

← Rooms 001 - 015 Rooms 016 - 001 →

“Great,” Chanyeol says, “I think we can find - _hang_ on.” He stops and stares more closely at the sign.

“Exactly.” A nurse stops to smile at them. “It’s not so simple. Where are you heading today, Dr. Park?”

“Hi, Songmi.” Chanyeol sounds relieved. “We’re on a quest for a chickenpox case in room thirteen.”

“Follow me,” the nurse - Songmi - says, and they push through a set of swing doors and start down a long corridor.

“You’re saving me from the labyrinth again,” Chanyeol says to her as Sehun follows.

“Sometimes it feels like half my job is redirecting lost consultants,” Songmi laughs as she takes them around a left-hand corner.

“That’s because this place was designed by Escher’s number one fan,” Sehun remarks, which makes both Songmi and Chanyeol laugh.

“Not quite that bad,” Songmi says. “You get used to it if you’re here all the time.” They arrive at the door numbered 013, and Sehun and Chanyeol thank her in unison.

“Good luck finding your way out again,” Songmi tells them, mirth in her eyes, and leaves them. Sehun follows Chanyeol into the exam room. The three-year-old patient is being held by her mother who is sitting on the bed, and her father is hovering close by. Even just by glancing at the little girl from across the room, Sehun can immediately see that she’s very sick. Her eyes are closed, her face is darkly flushed, and she’s limp in her mother’s arms. The chickenpox rash is visible all over her bare arms, neck and face. A young doctor with short, spiky blonde hair who must be Min Jiyong looks up as they come in and smiles over at the parents, explaining they’re the consultants he’s called in.

Chanyeol and Sehun introduce themselves, and then Chanyeol asks the mother to lie the sleeping child on the bed so that they can more easily examine her. Sehun takes one side of the bed and Chanyeol takes the other, and Dr. Min begins to tell them the patient's history in more detail than he’d had time for over the phone. Chanyeol looks up at the resident to listen, but Sehun is frowning as he examines the rash on her arms and neck more closely. The spots are far too large and dark in colour, in places combining to form large discoloured blotches, her elbows, fingers and wrists are swollen, and so are her neck and armpit glands. This is not a normal chickenpox. He lifts her pyjama top and finds more dark rash spreading across her stomach and chest. Her skin is very hot to the touch.

He moves down to examine her legs as Chanyeol turns back to the bed. He can feel the girl’s parents watching him anxiously, and he tries not to let his alarm show in his expression. He carefully eases the child’s small legs out of her pyjama pants, and his lips press together despite all his efforts.

“Look at this,” he murmurs to Chanyeol. His fingers are hovering over a large sore on the side of her left thigh. It is deep and black-looking with a crusted edge, and he knows the moment Chanyeol sees it, because the paediatrician goes still, his cheerful patter to the parents stopping mid-flow.

“Is that -” Chanyeol starts, then stops. Sehun glances at him.

“Necrotizing fasciitis,” he says, very quietly.

Chanyeol nods, confirming Sehun’s diagnosis. Sehun examines the rest of the little girl for any more areas of necrotic tissue, and finding none, takes a step back from the bed. Chanyeol is already asking the nurse to start immediate IV antibiotics, so Sehun turns to Dr. Min. “We need an orthopaedic surgeon and the paediatric intensivist,” he says, quiet enough that the parents can’t hear him. It’s better for them to be told directly. “She has necrotizing fasciitis secondary to the chickenpox infection.”

Dr. Min’s eyes widen, and he goes for the room phone without speaking. Sehun glances back at the little girl on the bed. This is a rare complication, but it’s deadly. The necrotic tissue can be debrieded in surgery, but the sore is already advanced and the child is systemically unwell. The infection is already destroying her cells, and if it’s gotten too far even the strongest antibiotics won’t save her. It’s the scariest thing about common childhood illnesses. They’re so normal that in the very few cases where something actually is dangerously wrong, it’s often missed.

There’s nothing more Sehun can do, though. His part here is over. Chanyeol is talking to the girl’s parents, and Dr. Min is on the phone to the orthopaedic surgeon, so Sehun backs away, nodding to Dr. Min as he goes. The young doctor waves in acknowledgement, but the frown decorating his forehead does not ease. Sehun retraces his steps, trying not to think too much about the dying three-year-old in exam room thirteen.

He stops in the ground floor cafeteria for a coffee, despite the fact that he’d promised Mikyung not to drink caffeine after five pm anymore after she’d noticed the shadows under his eyes over video chat a couple of days ago. It’s only five fifteen, that’s not much over the deadline, he tells himself a little guiltily, and he’d accidentally worked through lunch again, so he needs the energy to get himself home. He’s only just sat down with his long black in front of him when his phone chimes with the alert set to Mikyung’s KakaoTalk chat, and he startles as if she’d caught him in the act. Laughing a little at himself, he opens the chat.

 _Are you heading home?_

_Not yet,_ he taps back. _Had a case._

 _What, no dermatoscope pictures of someone’s revolting melanoma this time? Who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend?_ and an emoji with the tongue poking cheekily out. Sehun thinks of the three-year-old girl’s necrotizing leg. He picks up his cup and takes a large mouthful of coffee. It’s too hot, of course, and scalds his tongue and the roof of his mouth. It works fairly well at distracting him.

He’s waited too long to message back. Her next message pops up again. _Go home soon, you’re tired. Love you~_ and a string of heart emojis. Sehun smiles fondly at them. Only Mikyung could tell he’s tired just by the single message he’s sent her.

He sips the rest of his coffee more carefully, though it’s too late to save the skin of his tongue now, and waits for the caffeine to hit his bloodstream. He’s staring into the distance when his field of vision is taken up by a tall figure, and he blinks into the present to find Chanyeol in front of him again. The paediatrician drops into the chair opposite and takes a large gulp of whatever drink is in his takeaway cup. Probably a milky one, Sehun thinks. Either that or the man has iron lining his mouth.

“All done in there?” he asks, more to break the ice than anything else, because Chanyeol would not be in front of him otherwise.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol’s tongue flicks out to lick chocolate-coloured froth from the corner of his lip. “Kid’s in for emergency surgery and the PICU will take her from there.”

Sehun nods, goes to take another sip of coffee, and finds his cup is empty. He sighs into it. “Why is the coffee always gone?”

Chanyeol grins at him. “Isn’t it a bit late for coffee?”

“I like it to flow in my veins,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol laughs. “How are you doing, anyway?” he asks. “Seems like ages since we caught up.”

Sehun studies the dregs in the bottom of his cup. “I know,” he says. “Baekhyun used to message me all the time, but he stopped a while back, so I never knew what you guys were up to.” He shrugs. “I guess he finally got sick of me.” It was intended to come out joking, but somehow it just sounds sad. He laughs, quickly.

Chanyeol puts his cup down. “No,” he says, and something in his voice makes Sehun look up. “It wasn’t you. Baekhyun’s been having a hard time. He’s been on extended sick leave for the past couple of months.”

“Really?” Startled, Sehun stares at him. “What’s wrong with him? Is it serious?”

“Major depression,” Chanyeol says, and whatever Sehun might have expected, it wasn’t that.

“Depression?” he echoes. “Baekhyun?”

Chanyeol’s smile looks like it hurts. “You wouldn’t think it, right?”

Sehun feels hollow. All this time he’d assumed Baekhyun’s lack of contact had been a not-so-subtle hint, and Sehun had been too proud, and perhaps, if he’s honest, a little too hurt, to read any further into it. “No,” he says, and his voice sounds a little distant. “I wouldn’t.”

“He’s doing better, though,” Chanyeol says quickly. Perhaps he can see something in Sehun’s face. “He’s staying with me while he’s having treatment and the meds really are starting to kick in now. He’ll get there.”

“He’s staying with you?” Sehun needs to stop repeating things. “Did something happen with his girlfriend?”

“They broke up,” Chanyeol tells him. “We think that’s what tipped Baekhyun over.”

Sehun nods, because this makes sense to him. He thinks of Mikyung, and how it would feel to break up with her, and his stomach starts to hurt. Too much coffee without eating, probably.

As if reading his mind, Chanyeol sends him a smile that’s almost as bright as his usual one and asks, “how are things with Mikyung? Is she still down south?”

“Yes,” Sehun says. “She’s doing great. She had three articles published on the Ilbo web portal this week alone.” Chanyeol makes an impressed noise, and it reminds Sehun that his older sister is a famous reporter. Chanyeol would know the significance of getting articles published.

“No plans to come back up anytime soon, then?”

Sehun shakes his head. “She loves Busan, and it’s always been her dream to work for a big paper. She’s pretty settled there now.”

Chanyeol is looking at him a little more closely than Sehun feels entirely comfortable with. “How’s long-distance working out for you?”

Sehun had been meaning to say fine, like he always does, but perhaps he’s tired, or his stomach is distracting him, because what he actually says is, “I miss her.”

Chanyeol nods. “It must be hard,” he says, and hesitates. He looks like he wants to say something more, and Sehun finds a slight smile coming to his lips at how obviously hesitant he is.

“What?” he prompts, slightly teasing. “You can say it. I’m not that scary.”

Chanyeol flashes a quick smile that vanishes just as fast. “This might sound a bit strange,” he says, “but Sehun, tell me honestly. Are you okay?”

Sehun blinks. “I -”

“Because,” Chanyeol rushes on, “what happened with Baekhyun really blindsided me. He spiraled down right before my eyes, and - and I never want to see that happen to a friend again. And I’m looking at you now and you look so tired and you have this, I don’t know, this air of sadness or something, and it’s reminding me of -” he breaks off, takes a breath. “Sorry. I’m probably overstepping. I just want to make sure.”

Sehun is both taken aback and touched. Nobody ever asks him things like this. Nobody ever sees past his words and the calmness he keeps in his face. Yet Chanyeol, who doesn’t even know him that well, has called him a friend and cared enough to look beyond the surface, and the clumsiness of his words is endearing.

“I miss Mikyung,” he says honestly, because an honest question deserves an honest answer, “and I’ve never been the greatest at taking care of myself. I tend to live on coffee and instant ramyun when there’s nobody around to nag me.” He grins wryly, indicating his empty cup. “But I’m not depressed, Chanyeol. I’m doing fine. I’m just a little lonely.”

Chanyeol bites his lip. “I hate to think of you feeling lonely,” he says. “I’m sorry I never thought to contact you about Baekhyun. It’s kind of...been taking up my life, a bit.”

“It’s not your job to chase up Baekhyun’s friends,” Sehun tells him. “I could have found out for myself. I just assumed it was me, that he was tired of me. I thought I did well at picking up on the hint.” He laughs again, but Chanyeol doesn’t join him.

“Why would you think that?”

Sehun shrugs. “Isn’t that the way it always goes? You annoy people enough, they start to keep their distance.” It’s how it has always gone for Sehun before. Distance, he thinks, and his stomach twists again.

“Not with Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says. “Not when he’s well, anyway. And not with me, or Jongdae either.”

Sehun shrugs again and toys with his empty cup, spinning it between his hands.

“Actually,” Chanyeol says, a little lighter, “I’ve been wanting to get a few of Baekhyun’s friends around soon. Now that he’s a little more responsive, I think it would do him good to remember there’s more to life than my apartment. If you’re free on Saturday evening, would you come? It’ll be small - me and my flatmate, and Jongdae, and maybe just one or two other people, so he doesn’t get overwhelmed.”

Sehun wonders just how bad Baekhyun’s depression is. It sounds pretty awful, if just having friends over might be too much for him. In any case, hanging out with them sounds great, and much nicer than spending the evening in his tidy, quiet apartment, filling the hours by studying. “Sure, I’d love to,” he says. Chanyeol gives him a smile that is mostly relief, and Sehun has the sudden thought that Chanyeol might be asking him around as much for Sehun’s sake as for Baekhyun’s. The idea makes him feel shy.

“I’ll text you the address and time when I’ve confirmed it,” Chanyeol says. He gulps down the last of his hot chocolate, which must have gone cold by now, and they head to the elevator together. Chanyeol gets out first on the paediatric floor, and Sehun rides up to the tenth floor alone. Dermatology office hours are over, so the department is empty and quiet as he hangs up his white coat in his office and drags his sweater on in preparation to face the coolness of the evening.

Sehun’s apartment is only ten minutes from the hospital, so even though he’s on call tonight as well, he’s able to go home. It’s unlikely he’ll get called again anyway. He keys in his code, pushes the door open wearily, and finds that he must have left the hallway light on, and what looks like the kitchen light too. That’s not like him, he’s usually pretty conscientious with these things. He must be tireder than he thought. He unlaces his shoes and is placing them in the cupboard when he freezes, because he just heard a noise, and it sounds like it’s coming from the kitchen. His heart skips a beat, then starts to thump. Is someone here? It can’t be Mikyung surprising him. She’s following a big case down south at the moment. She couldn’t leave it to come up to Seoul.

Cautiously he edges down the hallway. There are definitely noises coming from the kitchen, and Sehun slides his phone into his hand. He has no illusions about his physical prowess. If there are burglars in his apartment, his best bet is to call the police and run for his life. But the voices he’s hearing now don’t sound much like burglars. There’s a female voice chattering, and a rumbling male voice answering, and both voices sound familiar.

Sehun steps into the kitchen doorway.

“Um,” he says, and the two intruders both turn around to look at him, and both their faces light up.

“Sehunnie!” cries Cha Miyoung, and before Sehun knows what’s happening, his girlfriend’s mother has crossed the kitchen and flung both her arms around him. He’s enveloped in a cloud of scent that screams VIOLETS! and it’s all he can do not to sneeze.

“Mom,” he says, rather strangled. He’s called Mikyung’s parents mom and dad for years. They insisted on it, and though it had felt awkward at first, he’s used to it enough now that it comes out naturally.

“You’re finally home, son," Cha Taeyoon calls jovially from across the kitchen. Sehun looks over Miyoung’s shoulder to see his girlfriend’s father unpacking colourful tupperware containers from several large square bags. His eyes widen as he takes in just how many containers are already stacked up on his kitchen bench.

“W-what are you, I mean, how,” Sehun stammers as Miyoung lets go of him and pushes back a little to rake him up and down with her gaze. “How did you get in?” It’s not exactly the most welcoming thing he’s ever said, but Sehun is not used to having his apartment suddenly invaded without warning like this.

Neither of them answer his question. It’s like they didn’t even hear him. Miyoung exclaims loudly over how skinny he is, and Taeyoon opens the fridge and jokes that Sehun must live off iced water and sriracha sauce, since that’s all there is in there. Flushing with embarrassment, Sehun is about to protest that there’s ramyun in the cupboard, and then thinks that perhaps he won’t say that. It’ll probably just make things worse. He slides his way awkwardly in his socks towards the kitchen counter and gapes at the sheer number of containers there. Miyoung and Taeyoon banter happily between each other as they bustle around his kitchen, and Sehun shuffles out of the way, feeling lost.

“I’m just gonna go change,” he says, needlessly as it happens, because neither of them pay any more attention to this than to his first question. Sehun escapes into his bedroom, closes the door behind him and leans against it. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hits speed dial 1.

“Mikyung,” he says when she picks up, and maybe his voice sounds rather more like a wail than he would like, but he can’t help it. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, what’s going on?” Mikyung sounds a little alarmed. “Are you okay? You sound -”

“Your mom and dad are in my apartment!” Sehun tries not to sound pathetic, but he’s not sure he’s entirely successful. “They got in here somehow while I was at work! They’re taking over my kitchen!”

“Oh dear.” He can tell Mikyung is trying not to laugh. “Sehun, I’m so sorry. Mom has the code, she came over a couple of times when I lived there, but I never thought she’d come over now that I’m not there.”

“Well, at least they’re not secretly master criminals, I guess,” Sehun says, and Mikyung peals with laughter. “But what are they doing here?”

“You tell me,” Mikyung laughs, “you’re the one who’s there.”

“They’re unpacking enough food to feed the entire army for a week, is what they’re doing,” Sehun says. “Did I miss a memo? Is there going to be a siege?”

“Oh,” Mikyung says, and now there’s realisation dawning in her voice. “Oh. I think maybe I…” she trails off.

“Mikyung, what did you do?” Sehun turns around and cracks the bedroom door open a little to peek out. He watches Miyoung direct Taeyoon in loading containers into his fridge.

“I may have mentioned to mom on the phone the other day that I was worried you weren’t eating properly,” Mikyung says, a little contrite.

“Mikyung!” Sehun cries. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Your eyes looked hollow on our last video call, babe, I’m worried about you, but I didn’t set her on you, I swear! I never dreamed she’d do this off her own bat.”

“She’s your mom, you know what she’s like,” Sehun grumbles. He peeks out of the door again. “Look, they can’t even fit it all in my fridge. The door won’t close, your dad is having to take stuff out again. What on earth am I going to do with all that?”

Mikyung giggles. “Invite some friends around?”

“I’d have to invite my entire graduation class around to make a dent in this.”

“Now you’re just exaggerating,” she tells him. “And stop pouting, I can hear you.”

“I can’t,” Sehun says. “I’m one big pout right now. I want my quiet apartment and my instant noodles.”

“The universe must be paying you back,” Mikyung says, and her voice goes low, sepulchral, “for the spider.”

“Oh,” and suddenly, the catastrophe in his kitchen seems a little less important. “S-so that arrived, huh?”

“It did. Three days ago, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh,” Sehun says again. A grin that is more than half pure nerves is tugging at his mouth. “I - I thought you might be lonely...and a pet was just what you needed -”

“A pet?”

“Sweet Mikyung, angel of forgiveness, light of my life -”

“Sehun, I’m honestly surprised you didn’t hear me scream right up there in Seoul. My neighbours knocked on my door. They thought I was being murdered.”

Sehun starts to giggle, hand over his mouth. “Sorry, ” he says, muffled.

“You are not sorry at all,” Mikyung tells him.

“I am, I am -”

“That’s why the universe is punishing you by setting my parents on you. It’s called karma.”

“How does mailing toy spiders equate to having parents set on you?”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not a karma god. All I can say is that you deserve it.”

“I can’t believe you waited three days to tell me,” Sehun says.

“I was trying to decide whether it was a better revenge to stop speaking to you for a week or to pretend it never happened so that you’d always be wondering,” Mikyung says. “Luckily for me, the karma gods have intervened.”

“What did you do with the spider?” Sehun asks. “It was cute.”

“It. Was. Not. Cute.”

“Aw, come on,” Sehun wheedles. “It was fuzzy! It wasn’t even one of the realistic ones!”

“It was quite realistic enough for me. I made Yoochun take it with him when he picked me up to go surfing. He put it on his dashboard so it could be his driving companion.”

Sehun only notices how much happier talking to her had been making him when the mention of Yoochun steals it away. “Oh, well,” he says, lightly. “It’s missing out on the glory of basking in your presence, but at least it’ll get to see the world.”

Mikyung giggles, but quietens quickly. “Sehun,” she says, “spiders aside, I really am sorry about my parents. Don’t feel bad if you end up having to throw some of the food out. They won’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” Sehun suddenly feels all his tiredness weighing on him again. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re okay, though?” she’s quiet now. “I don’t want to nag you, and I know you can look after yourself, but...”

“Of course I’m okay,” Sehun forces himself to smile so that she can hear it in his voice. “I better go now, or your parents will think I’ve been eaten by the wardrobe monster.”

“I love you so much,” she says, and Sehun starts to feel okay again.

“I love you more,” he murmurs. “I miss you.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I miss you too.”

They whisper back and forth a few more times before reluctantly hanging up. Sehun quickly changes out of his work clothes and into sweatpants and a hoodie. Despite his protests to Mikyung and his dismay at the unexpected invasion of his home, there’s a sense of warmth beneath it, and the chains around his chest have loosened again. Mikyung’s parents may be a little over the top, but they wouldn’t do this if they didn’t care. Today has been interesting like that. First Chanyeol cared enough to ask - and really ask, not just out of politeness - if he was doing okay, and now Miyoung and Taeyoon are caring enough to spend what must have been at least an entire day cooking for him without being asked. If they can do all that, the least Sehun can do is welcome them.

In the kitchen, he tries to help Miyoung and Taeyoon sort out the rest of the food, but he’s just in the way, and Miyoung points him over to one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar and tells him kindly to sit down and relax after his long day of work. Sehun obeys, feeling remarkably like a guest in his own home. He leans his elbows on the bar and answers Miyoung’s questions about his workday as best he can without mentioning anything too depressing. He pretends to understand when Taeyoon starts talking about baseball statistics and which team is likely to win the big game happening this weekend. Sehun has zero interest in sports, but Mikyung’s dad supports the Hanwha Eagles, and since Sehun, when asked, had been far too shy and desperate to make a good impression to admit that he didn’t follow any team, he’d said he supported the Eagles too. This, it seemed, was enough for Taeyoon to practically adopt him on the spot, so Sehun doesn’t regret it, even if Mikyung sniggers behind her hand at him every time Taeyoon starts to talk his ear off about the team. He nods and tries to make intelligent comments in the appropriate places, glad as always that both her parents are so talkative that he doesn’t really have to say much back.

“Will you stay for dinner?” he asks a little desperately when Miyoung has packed all her now-empty bags and seems ready to leave. “You’ve worked so hard, please share some of this with me,” but Miyoung just beams at him and shakes her head.

“No, dear, this is all for you,” she says fondly. “You look tired, we won’t intrude on your evening. Just let me know as soon as you’ve finished everything and I’ll come back and get the containers.”

Sehun nods helplessly, thanks them, and shuffles after them to the door to see them off. When they’ve finally gone, he goes back into his kitchen and stands in front of the fridge. He gazes for a while at the Frozen II fridge magnets Mikyung had gotten obsessed with collecting last year. She’d bought out practically the entire aisle of Frosted Loops so that she could collect them all, and they’d crunched on the sugary cereal instead of popcorn while watching movies for the next six months. He remembers Mikyung lining up all the packets and tearing them open with such excitement. Isn’t it wonderful being an adult so that you can buy fifteen boxes of Frosted Loops all at once just for the collectable items? she’d asked, and Sehun had agreed that it was. She’d handed him each magnet she opened, and Sehun had stuck them onto the fridge door in the pattern of a snowflake, where they still remain.

He’s smiling at the memory. He tears his eyes from the magnet showing one of the princesses wrapped around the dude with the reindeer - he keeps forgetting the character’s names despite Mikyung’s scandalized looks whenever he gets them wrong - and pulls open the fridge door. The light and cold air shines out on him as he regards the contents glumly. He’s never seen a fridge so well-packed in his life. There’s not even a centimetre of space left empty.

“I am in serious trouble,” he says aloud, and closes the door again. The temptation to just pretend it all doesn’t exist and get out one of his packets of instant noodles from the cupboard above the sink is strong, but he resists. Pretending his problems don’t exist won’t make them go away. He remembers Mikyung’s suggestion of calling friends to help him, and decides that it’s a good idea. He’s too tired to think about entertaining properly, but he does have one good friend who he knows will help him out with anything and not care if Sehun doesn’t want to talk or do much, so he messages Jongin and asks him if he wants to come over for dinner. His friend messages back immediately - he’s just come out of a long surgery and he’s starving, and Sehun looks at the fridge door again and messages back, good.

Jongin, when he arrives half an hour later, grins as he regards the amount of food crammed into Sehun’s tiny kitchen.

“You know, I thought you were exaggerating,” he says, “but now I see your problem. This is more than you eat in a month.” He starts opening lids, making noises of appreciation at what he finds inside.

“Feel free to take anything away with you,” Sehun opens his drawers to grab a couple of plates and sets of chopsticks. “It feels wrong to let it go to waste when they spent so much time and effort making it.”

Jongin looks a little wistful as he sits opposite Sehun, a bounty of traditional Korean dishes spread out on the bench between them. He doesn’t say anything, but Sehun remembers from the time they spent as roommates in university how Jongin had never gotten anything from his parents - no care packages, no visits, no phone calls. For quite a long time Sehun had wondered if Jongin was actually an orphan.

They talk as they eat, falling into easy conversation the way they always have. Jongin is one of the few people Sehun really feels at ease with all the time. He’s got the kind of sweet, accepting nature that makes it almost impossible to be uncomfortable around, and he’s also one of the few people Sehun knows who is actually shyer than him. This has the effect of pushing Sehun out of his own head and into looking out for his friend. Tonight, Jongin talks about an art exhibition at COEX he wants to go and see. His eyes light up as he speaks, and Sehun watches him with interest.

“It sounds great,” he says. “So are you okay with visiting galleries and stuff now?”

Jongin glances at him in surprise, and Sehun sees a hint of the vulnerability that’s never far from the surface with Jongin, so he continues quickly. “Remember when we were first years? I got given free tickets to some exhibition and asked you to come, and you said -”

Jongin remembers. “I said I couldn’t,” he says. “It was too painful. It reminded me too much of what I’d lost, what I could never be.”

“Has it gotten better, then?” Sehun is curious. “It doesn’t hurt to go to art shows any more?”

Jongin smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess it’s true what they say about time, about how it heals. I’ll never know if I could have been an artist, but it doesn’t hurt me to think about what might have been anymore. I’m…” he pauses, and there’s a soft light in his eyes. “I’m happy with my life now.”

Sehun smiles. “It makes me really happy to hear you say that,” he says. Their eyes meet for a brief moment, before they’re both ducking their heads in mutual shyness. It is true, though, and he had to say it. His friend has been through so much more than anyone should have to bear, and especially not a person with so gentle a soul as Jongin.

“I’ve wanted to tell you something for a while, actually,” Jongin says later, when they’re sprawling on beanbags in front of Sehun’s ancient SNES, clunky grey controllers in hand. The console is a relic older than Sehun himself, handed down from an older cousin along with a box full of early slab-like Nintendo games that were ridiculously uncool when Sehun was a kid, but are now collectable and probably some of the more valuable things he owns. Sehun crawls forward to slot the 1992 Super Mario Kart into the console’s square mouth.

“Go for it,” he says as the TV screen lights up with retro graphics and the electronic theme music starts to play. He flops down on the beanbag next to Jongin and wriggles down among the beans until he’s in the best slouched playing position.

“I’ve met a girl,” Jongin says.

Sehun raises an interested eyebrow.

“Her name is Sohee.” Jongin’s voice has gone all soft and warm. It makes Sehun smile. “She’s a zookeeper at Bukhansan Zoo - her specialty is big cats, lions and tigers and cheetahs.”

“Wow,” Sehun says. “I remember going there when I was a kid. It was awesome.”

“I went there to watch her work a couple of weeks ago,” Jongin says. “It was fun, even though her coworker tried to get me to hold a Burmese python.”

Sehun laughs. “So you’re together? Officially?”

Jongin is smiling, the light from the screen glowing in his face. “Yep. I kept it secret for ages, because...well, you know,” his voice gets quiet, and Sehun does know, so he doesn’t say anything. “But it’s going really well, and I want to introduce her to my friends...so I thought it might be fun if we had a double date sometime, with you and Mikyung.” Jongin is focusing on the screen as he selects Yoshi, like he always does, but he flicks his eyes shyly sideways at Sehun.

“Sounds great,” Sehun says. “Mikyung will love to meet Sohee too. You know her, she loves everyone.”

“She’s still in Busan, right?”

“Yeah, but we go back and forth every now and then. She said when this big case she’s been following is done she’ll come up for a weekend.” Mikyung always picks Princess Peach when they play this game together. Sehun selects the golden-haired princess for himself, and Jongin snickers. They do a couple of circuit races, both of which Sehun wins, then go into battle mode and try to pop each other’s three balloons. Sehun gets absorbed as he always does, oddly competitive over games where he never is in real life, and it’s a while before Jongin speaks again.

“Is it weird living apart after you were living together for so long?”

Sehun narrows his eyes at the screen as he tries to get his clunky kart to go around a sharp corner without falling off the edge of the course. “Pretty weird,” he admits. “I thought I’d get used to it, but it hasn’t seemed to happen. It all just feels so empty without her around.”

He senses, more than sees, Jongin glance at him. “The apartment, I mean,” he clarifies, though the first words had been more honest.

“You ever think of moving down there?”

Sehun pauses the game and turns to look at Jongin. “You know, you’re the first person who has asked it that way round. My parents think she should quit her job and move back here. And I’m like, why do they think that? What makes her job less important than mine?”

“It’s like that,” Jongin says. “They try to push us into these boxes we don’t fit. My father -” he stops, abruptly. “Never mind.”

“I have thought about it, actually,” Sehun goes back to Jongin’s question. “When I was down there last I saw a practice for sale, and it made me wonder if I could do it.”

“Go into private practice?” Jongin looks back at him, interest chasing the clouds from his face.

“Yeah.” Saying the words aloud makes it seem more real. “I mean, I don’t know anything about running a practice, but..”

“You could do it,” Jongin says loyally. “You could figure all that business stuff out.”

Sehun laughs. “There’s a lot of obstacles,” he says. “It would certainly be easier to stay here, where I already have a good job and I know everyone. I’ve never lived anywhere but Seoul. But for Mikyung...I think I could do it.” Heat crawls across his cheeks at admitting it aloud, and he is glad the room is dark.

Jongin grins at him, teeth flashing. “Spread your little wings and fly away,” he sings a line from an ancient pop song, and they both laugh, but Sehun gets the message. He does want to fly, and the only direction he can imagine flying in is towards Mikyung. He restarts the game and continues making Princess Peach annihilate Yoshi’s balloons, but all that is in his mind is the number of the real estate agency he saved into his phone.

When they’re tired of the technological limitations of the SNES, Sehun swaps the cables over to his Xbox One and they play Lara Croft until Jongin falls asleep, suddenly and completely, controller slipping from his hand as his head drops back against the beanbag. He’s probably exhausted from doing surgery all day. Sehun shrugs and keeps playing alone until his phone vibrating in his pocket makes him pause. Chanyeol has texted him the time and address for Saturday’s gathering, and Sehun glances at Jongin, then at the kitchen still impossibly full of food, and texts back.

_OK if I bring Kim Jongin and a metric ton of my girlfriend’s mom’s cooking?_

Chanyeol replies immediately. _A hot orthopod and home cooking?? do u even need to ask?!?!?!_

Sehun snickers to himself and slouches deeper down into his beanbag to navigate Lara Croft through the Temple of Osiris from between his knees. Problem solved.

\---

“What’s up with you anyway?”

Yeonseok glances aside at his partner, eyes leaving the road for a split second before returning. Yang Jiah is smirking at him.

“What do you mean?” he asks, his fingers tapping to the beat of the song playing in his head as he drives the patrol car back to the station. They’ve been on response today, driving around the city waiting to be directed to calls, and it’s all been fine, nothing too difficult to deal with. Nothing seems too hard to deal with these days.

“This!” The other police officer gestures at him. “This everything! You look like you won Lotto or something.”

Yeonseok laughs. Winning Lotto, he thinks, wouldn’t even come close.

“It’s not a crime to be happy, right?” he quips, and Jiah rolls her eyes at him before pulling the sunshade down to check her hair in the small mirror.

Yeonseok had thought he was happy before. He’s a pretty steady kind of guy, his emotions stable through all but the very worst cases. It makes him a good foil to Chanyeol, who goes up and down like a hyperactive, loveable puppy. But two weeks ago his boyfriend finally, finally got to the point of accepting himself enough to want to come out, and Yeonseok didn’t realise just how much worry and sadness there was all bottled up inside him. Every time he’d seen Chanyeol uncertain, every time he’d seen him with that vulnerable, fearful look in his eyes, something inside Yeonseok had felt like crying. He wished with all his heart Chanyeol could see himself the way Yeonseok saw him. So beautiful, so precious, so intensely deserving of love.

Baekhyun had taken it well, and Chanyeol’s newfound confidence around the apartment has been a balm to Yeonseok’s soul. And tonight, Chanyeol has agreed to introduce Yeonseok to a few of his friends. Yeonseok has heard all about Chanyeol’s friends and he’s excited to finally meet them. And he’s so proud of Chanyeol. He knows just how hard it has been for his boyfriend to come to this point.

When he gets home, Chanyeol and Baekhyun are both in the lounge, dragging the couch back to make more space around the coffee table. After Baekhyun’s episode the other day they’re back to not leaving him alone for even a second, even though Baekhyun has gotten exponentially better since the incident. Chanyeol’s honesty with him seems to have been some kind of turning point, and Yeonseok intends to discuss with both of them soon whether they’re ready to take the step of trusting Baekhyun to be alone sometimes, rather than he and Chanyeol having to tag-team. It’ll be much easier when Baekhyun is well enough to go back to work.

“I’m home,” he announces, depositing the heavy bag with a couple of six-packs of beer onto the kitchen counter. One of the guests is bringing food, apparently, so all they have to provide is drinks. Chanyeol looks up and grins at him, face flushed with exertion from hauling the couch, and Yeonseok comes over to kiss him hello. On the other side of the couch, he sees Baekhyun clasp his hands and flutter his eyelashes behind Chanyeol’s back, and Yeonseok is startled into laughter.

“What?” Chanyeol follows his gaze over his shoulder and turns around, but that’s all the time Baekhyun has needed to wipe his face blank. Puzzled, Chanyeol turns back around to Yeonseok, and the adorable confusion in his face just makes Yeonseok need to kiss him again. He aims a mock scowl at Baekhyun over Chanyeol’s shoulder, and Baekhyun lifts both hands in a shrug that says, what? as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.

The unexpected teasing makes Yeonseok’s heart feel light. Chanyeol has mentioned Baekhyun so many times over the years they’ve been together that Yeonseok felt like he knew the man even though they’d never actually met. This kind of teasing seems like a slight return of the playful personality Chanyeol had always described to him, and Yeonseok is very glad to see it, both for Baekhyun’s sake and for Chanyeol’s. He never wants to see Chanyeol as distraught as he had been that day he’d found Baekhyun close to death. Never, ever again.

He goes to change out of his uniform and shower, and when he returns the other two have finished rearranging the lounge furniture and Chanyeol is on his hands and knees trying to connect the dusty playstation they haven’t used in months to the TV. “Sehun and Jongin like gaming,” he explains without Yeonseok asking. He cranes his neck up from his position halfway wedged behind the TV and holds up a fistful of cables. “Can you remember which of these goes where?”

“They’re color-coded, remember. Yellow into yellow, you know the drill,” and when Chanyeol dives back behind the TV to try it out, Yeonseok walks over and smacks his butt.

“Ow!” Chanyeol yelps, muffled.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It was right there, I just had to whack it,” Yeonseok says. He catches Baekhyun’s eye and they both start laughing. Yeonseok really likes Baekhyun’s laugh. It’s still rare, but all the more precious for that. It makes his too-thin face light up and his eyes disappear into sparkling crescents, and Yeonseok is getting more and more glimpses of the person Baekhyun really is.

The doorbell rings while Chanyeol is crawling his way backwards out from behind the TV. “That’ll be Sehun, he was coming early with the food,” Chanyeol says as he stands up. “Baekhyun, can you turn on the PS4 and see if it works?”

Baekhyun kneels down to obey and Yeonseok trails Chanyeol towards the door. It opens onto two young men, both nearly as tall as Chanyeol. They’re both carrying several heavy-looking bags in each hand, and Yeonseok reaches out to relieve them of their burdens while they step inside. Chanyeol greets them happily and shows them where to put their shoes and find the new sets of guest slippers they’ve purchased specially, while Yeonseok lugs the heavy bags into the kitchen and drags them up onto the counter. He’s soon joined by Chanyeol and the guests, both trailing Chanyeol closely, peeping around the apartment with shy eyes. Yeonseok has to hide a smile. Two of a kind, these two.

“Yeonseok, these are Oh Sehun and Kim Jongin,” Chanyeol introduces. “Both the whiz kids of their departments, or so I hear,” he grins as Sehun shuffles his feet and Jongin blushes.

“Welcome,” Yeonseok says with his easy smile, holding out his hand to shake. He glances quickly at Chanyeol. He can sense his boyfriend wanting to say it, but he’s too nervous still, too unused to saying the words easily, so Yeonseok steps up for him. “I’m Kim Yeonseok, Chanyeol’s boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you.” Jongin, whose hand he’s currently shaking, sends him a sweet smile from where he’s hiding beneath a slightly too-long fringe, while Sehun turns to Chanyeol and grins broadly at him, making Chanyeol flush red right from his neck to the tip of his hair roots. Yeonseok wants to laugh more than ever. He likes these kids.

On hearing the start-up noise of the PS4 - Baekhyun has evidently got it working - Sehun vanishes into the lounge, and Yeonseok directs Chanyeol to follow with a nod of his head. Jongin stays in the kitchen with Yeonseok to help unpack the food.

“This is amazing,” Yeonseok remarks. There’s so much, all homemade and beautifully packed. “Did you two make all this? You should’ve been chefs, not doctors.”

Jongin laughs. “No, it was Sehun’s girlfriend’s mom. She thinks he needs feeding up,” he explains. He has a soft voice as sweet as his smile.

“What’s your speciality?” Yeonseok asks. “You’re younger than Chanyeol, right?”

“Orthopaedics,” Jongin says. “I got my fellowship last year.” He’s looking less shy already and smiles when Yeonseok congratulates him. “What about you, what do you do?”

“I’m a police officer,” Yeonseok says, and is surprised to see his head go up and back, eyes widening a little before his face shutters, closing the reaction off. Yeonseok knows the reaction well, he sees it all the time in people who’ve had less than welcome dealings with the police, but seeing it on a shy young doctor is out of the ordinary. There are many reasons why people might be uneasy around the police, and Yeonseok senses that Jongin isn’t the troublemaker kind. More likely he’s been a victim. The last thing he wants is the kid to be uncomfortable, so he changes the subject smoothly, keeping his voice warm as he tells Jongin about the time he was sixteen and broke his hand snowboarding, because he remembers the orthopaedic surgeon at the time saying it was an interesting kind of fracture. As he’d hoped, Jongin brightens with interest at the description of the displaced spiral fracture and the four titanium pins that are now in Yeonseok’s third metacarpal, and they discuss the accident and his surgery while plating food and warming some of the dishes in the oven until the doorbell goes again and Chanyeol goes to answer it. Yeonseok doesn’t need to go to the door to see who it is, recognizing Jongdae’s light, musical voice from the couple of times they’ve met and spoken over the phone. Another voice, quieter, speaks as well and Yeonseok deduces that this will be the final guest of the evening.

Chanyeol and the newcomer Yeonseok hasn’t yet met appear in the kitchen and this time, perhaps encouraged by Sehun and Jongin’s reactions, Chanyeol is the one to introduce Yeonseok to Kim Minseok as “my boyfriend”. Hearing those words come out of Chanyeol’s mouth, introducing him this way for the first time in five long, fearful years, is so wonderful that Yeonseok, who is usually so in control of his emotions, feels tears of love and pride well up in his eyes. He blinks hard and beams so happily through his unshed tears at the unsuspecting Minseok as he shakes his hand that the poor man probably wonders what he’s on, but it doesn’t matter to Yeonseok. All that matters is that Chanyeol is being open, and what’s more, he’s being accepted, every one of his friends taking the revelation in their stride, just as Yeonseok always told him true friends would. Yeonseok can see Chanyeol just filling up with wonder and joy. It’s like he’s uncurling and expanding right there in front of him, all the years of fear falling away and letting him finally shine with all his brightness and beauty. Yeonseok has never been so happy to be proven right in all his life.

“We have similar names,” Kim Minseok says to him with interest. It turns out they’re from the same Kim clan and they start discussing whether the _seok_ part of their names runs in the family. Before long they’re all chatting easily about Korean naming traditions while they bring dishes out to the table in the lounge. Yeonseok sees that Sehun has managed to get Baekhyun to play a PS4 game with him, and his heart warms even further at the sight of the two of them sitting cross-legged in front of the TV like little kids, faces intent on the screen as they race dirt rally cars down a muddy mountainside track. The sound is kept low enough that it’s still easy to talk, and Chanyeol is already deep in discussion with Jongdae over something that must be medical, because it’s full of words Yeonseok has never heard in his life. Everyone seems comfortable and happy in each other’s presence, and Yeonseok feels like the universe has given him the most wonderful gift he could ever dream of. He puts down his last plate of food on the table and moves over to Jongdae and Chanyeol, and he’s allowed to slip his hands around Chanyeol’s waist and lean his head against his shoulder, he’s allowed to show the affection that he’s always had to desperately suppress in public before. Chanyeol takes Yeonseok’s hands where they meet around his middle and casually pulls him a little closer, not even breaking stride in his conversation with Jongdae, and Yeonseok knows he’s never been happier.


	22. April 4th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains portrayal of past physical assault/abuse.

The skies are blue, and birds are singing soft melodies into the spring afternoon. The cherry blossom trees have finally bloomed and there’s a certain softness to the world, a hope that all is well, and everything will be just fine sooner rather than later. People smile more often, they shed their winter coats and new couples pop up like flowers blooming in the fields. Spring is here and it is here to stay as the sun warms up the Korean soil.

Except within Yixing. The joys of spring have gone unnoticed, and a metaphorical thundercloud looms over him and threatens rain with every moment. His usually dimpled smile has been replaced with a constant crease between his eyebrows and his temper has become short-fused, ready to snap over the smallest things. He knows the nurses are whispering behind their hands as they watch him growl in frustration at his computer screen or lose patience with questions from the junior residents. They’re wondering what has happened to the gentle, patient Dr. Zhang they all know and like.

Yixing has lost himself too. He hates feeling like this, and he doesn’t really know how to process it; anger is not a common emotion for him. But it’s anger he feels now, or at least he thinks it is; he's angry at himself for all the ways in which he’s failed. It is him who has a hereditary genetic disease. It is him who can’t fulfil his responsibility to carry on the family line. He feels like there's a scream all coiled up tight inside his chest, unable to get out. He wants to let it out, cry it all out into open space, but he doesn't know how. The other staff are making allowances for him, blaming it on the stress of his recent surgery and the blood disorder that makes it so much harder for his body to heal, but he knows it’s no excuse for his behaviour. He should be able to control himself and he’s failing to do that too. It all just keeps piling on top of each other and he feels under so much pressure that he doesn't know what to do with it.

“Dr. Zhang?” Yixing doesn’t recognize the voice calling his name. It’s probably the new oncology nurse. He frowns down at the journal article he’s trying to read. The article is badly written, the references oblique and pointless. He wants to slam it down on the desk, and slam his head down too.

“What is it now?” His fingers hover over the page he was about to turn, but he doesn’t look up. He’s supposed to be on a break; can’t they leave him alone for even a few minutes?

“Someone is here to see you.”

Yixing looks up to see his wife, dressed in casual clothing, next to the new nurse. Sudden shame strikes him. He was unnecessarily rude, and now Songmi has caught him out. He should apologize to the nurse, but she disappears before he can say anything. Songmi walks over to stand in front of his desk.

“What is it? Did you forget your keys again?” Yixing tries to speak pleasantly, but the effort only makes his words come out oddly flat. Songmi shakes her head, looking serious.

“No. I spoke to Chief Moon and got you off early. We’re going.” She jerks her head at the door, and Yixing puts the journal down.

“Going where?”

“I’ll tell you later. We don’t have all day, get changed.”

He’s rarely seen her look at him so severely. Yixing swallows back the complaint that wants to burst out of him about her just reorganizing his schedule without consulting him. He stands up and crosses the office to where his jacket hangs behind the door. Songmi just watches him with arms crossed over her chest. As he changes he tries to smooth his frown away, but he doesn’t think he’s entirely successful.

When he’s ready Songmi takes his hand and pulls him out into the hallway. Her serious face has morphed into concern as she looks up at him, but she doesn't say anything more. When the elevator arrives it’s crammed full of people and they’re squeezed up against the wall as it makes the trip down to basement level three. The car beeps as Songmi unlocks it, getting into the driver's seat without questioning. Yixing hasn't managed to drive again since the accident, irrational dread striking him every time he thinks about sitting behind the wheel, even though he's fine in the passenger side. He bites his lip as he gets into the car. He should be driving, not making his wife navigate the city traffic. He's failing her in so many ways he's losing count.

Songmi starts the car and drives up the basement ramps without saying a word. Yixing fiddles with the radio stations for a while to break the silence, eventually settling on one playing the latest pop hits. The cheerful beats feel out of place in the tense atmosphere, but it’s better than wallowing in doom and gloom.

It’s not until Songmi drives onto the entry ramp for the highway leading out of the city that confusion prompts him to speak. He'd assumed they were going home. “Where are we going?”

Songmi quickly casts a glance in his direction before returning her attention to the road.

“To my parents’ cabin near Seoraksan.”

“Why?”

“Because you have been acting like a complete jerk since the accident, and I refuse to let it continue any longer.” Songmi doesn’t look at him, but there’s a hint of anger in her voice. Guilt and shame join Yixing's frustration and tie themselves into a tight knot in his chest. He swallows as he stares out of the window. He never intended to be a jerk, least of all to Songmi. That's not who he is, or not who he thought he was. Maybe he was only a good person when things were going well for him. The idea makes him truly loathe himself.

Songmi tries to apologize halfway to Seoraksan. Yixing shrugs. “It’s fine,” he says, and spends the last hour of the journey gazing at the increasingly mountainous country, the vapid pop songs on the radio going in one ear and out the other until they arrive at the cabin in Seoraksan National Park.

Songmi pulls up outside the cabin. The mountain pines are a vivid dark green against the lighter greens of the leaves and budding flowers of the seasonal trees, and the ground cover is flowering too. The air is cleaner and colder than the city, and the sun gently brushes the mountain ridges with a soft golden light, but Yixing’s mood has turned from frustration to bleak depression and he barely notices how beautiful it is. He goes to the back of the car and helps her unload the luggage she’s packed. She’s brought his acoustic guitar too in its hard black case. Yixing hasn’t touched his guitar in months and suddenly it feels appealing to lose himself in playing.

Once everything is inside, he finds a spot on a wooden chest in the corner, takes out his guitar and tunes by ear while Songmi brews coffee. Once tuned, he begins to play. He knows he’s being avoidant, because she won’t attempt to talk to him while he’s playing, but he doesn’t want to talk, doesn't want to try and explain what's wrong with him when he doesn't really understand it himself. The steel strings press into his fingertips and the varnished wood is cool and smooth against his body as he coaxes melodies from the strings, never stopping between pieces, fuguing and improvising wherever the music takes him. Songmi puts coffee beside him, but he ignores it. He bends over his guitar and lets himself drift in the music, and hours pass this way.

He only looks up when the light flicks on, illumining the wooden cabin in golden light. He hadn’t realised it had gotten so dark. Songmi gets up from the couch and walks towards the kitchen, probably intending to start dinner. Yixing notices that she’s put the book she was reading face down on the table, bending the spine instead of closing it properly. He bites back the comment that rises up, his mother hated it when he treated books that way and the habit has carried on with him, but he’s just managed to find a little peace through playing and he doesn’t want to ruin it all. He puts his guitar aside and gets up to pick up the book. Casting his eyes around for something to use as a bookmark, he sees a brochure on the table. It’s from a private company called Medical Avenue and on the front it says IVF in large white letters. The letters send a jolt through him. All the guilt, pain, failure and frustration all come crowding back like a tidal wave, and he snatches the brochure up from the table and storms into the kitchen.

“Why do you have this?” he asks. Songmi turns around from where she’s been getting a chopping board from the cupboard. She looks at the brochure, then back at him.

“Because IVF is the next logical step from here. I was just looking for ideas,” she replies, and takes the brochure from his hand.

“Why do you keep pushing this? Can't you just accept it? We can’t have kids!” It stuns Yixing as much as it stuns Songmi. She stares at him as the emotions he's been holding down flood out of him, his voice sounding raw with pain. “Say we try IVF. We pump you full of chemicals and for what? It probably won’t even work, we’ll try for years and just keep failing over and over again and I'll have to feel like this for the whole time. Even if it does miraculously work someday, the kid might end up with the haemophilia gene and I'll have passed a life-threatening illness to our grandchildren. I can't give you children, Songmi. I’ve failed you, don’t you get it?” His voice cracks as tears start to blur his vision. “Why do we need kids anyway? We were happy before, Songmi, we were happy with just each other and now...”

Songmi’s eyes are huge with shock as she stares at him. Tears are running down his cheeks now, consuming his words. The worst part of it all is that Yixing wants children. He hadn’t really thought much about it until she suggested it, but once the idea was in his mind, he'd wanted it so badly. He’d looked forward so much to the pregnancy test coming back positive, to preparing the house and buying a crib and toys and baby clothes, to bringing a new person into the world, a little part of him and Songmi both, and the joy of seeing them grow up and go through life. Now there will be no child, only the guilt and the heavy weight of failure every time he thinks of what they might have had.

A small hand pulls at his fingers and gently pulls him across the room and down onto the couch. He leans forward and hides his wet face in his hands. Songmi gently caresses his back, hand moving up and down in a soothing manner. Yixing feels horrible. He hadn’t meant to go overboard like this; he hadn’t wanted to hurt Songmi.

“Yixing,” a soft voice sounds from beside him and he lifts his face from his hands to look at his wife. She looks sad. “Why didn’t you tell me all this?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, I know you want to try but it's just so overwhelming, there are so many expectations on me and if it doesn't work I'm going to fail you again and I don't know how long I can handle feeling like this…”

Songmi scoots closer and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Have I been pushing you towards treatment instead of listening to what you really wanted?” she asks. Yixing turns to her in surprise.

“No,” he says automatically, before he realizes maybe she's right. He sighs. “I don’t know, it all just felt so overwhelming. I didn’t get to process it at all because of the accident, and the second I started to recover it was all IVF everywhere and…”

Songmi nods. “I’m really sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I just thought this was what we wanted, and I wasn’t put off by the treatment, so I assumed you wouldn’t be either. It was unfair to you.”

They look at each other in silence, but it’s no longer heavy. There is still a difficult topic to discuss, but the friction that wedged itself between them in the past month has gone. Yixing lets go of her hand so he can wrap his arms around her and pull her close. Her hair shampoo smells exactly like it normally does. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the hug itself, but it feels tremendous. After weeks of turmoil, having no hidden emotions between them feels like being woken from a nightmare.

“How about we forget about kids and treatments and adoption and everything that comes with it for a while, until you're ready to think about it again. It's important that you don't feel pressured, baby. There's no rush,” she says, holding him a little tighter. Yixing pushes his face into her hair and closes his eyes. Forgetting about it all sounds like an excellent idea. He won't have to worry or stress out. They can just go back to the way it was.

\---

Jongin is the last to leave the multidisciplinary care review. He’d gotten distracted by looking up a Pubmed reference the oncologist had mentioned on his phone, and by the time he’s gone through the abstract and decided it’s worth saving to read later, the room is empty. He gathers up his armful of patient files from the table, stacks his notebook on top of them, and drags the fogged-glass sliding door closed behind him as he leaves.

The meeting room is the last in the row of small ones right at the back of the ground floor, past the bigger conference rooms and the two lecture theatres, and the buzzing of the foyer and cafeteria area at the front of the building can barely be heard. It’s quiet and feels empty, but as Jongin walks past the other rooms, movement catches the corner of his eye. He glances over automatically to see a couple of people inside the room he’s passing, figures blurry through the fogged glass wall. One person is hanging their head, shoulders hunched. Even as the submissive posture registers with Jongin, the second person raises a hand and slaps them across the face.

Jongin’s heart stops for a moment that feels like eternity, then starts up again way too fast, leaving him dizzy from the rush of blood. There’s a heavy thump and a fluttering noise, and it takes him a second too long to understand he’s dropped his armful of files and they’ve burst open on hitting the floor, scattering loose leaves of paper everywhere. He doesn’t move to pick them up. He can’t take his eyes off the figures through the clouded glass. There’s a high-pitched tone singing in his ears, growing louder and louder as he stands there like a statue. His mouth is dry. He’s clutching at his forearms, where the sleeves of his shirt hide the marks, and even though he knows it’s impossible, he’s sure he smells cigarette smoke. He wants to run away, needs to get away, hide. But in the room a hand goes up and back in a clear threat, and Jongin cannot, will not run away, because he knows how it feels. He knows only too well.

He puts his hand on the sliding door handle and drags it open. It rattles in its runners and crashes into the wall, harder than he’d expected. At the noise the people in the room look over. The woman with her hand raised is a senior staff member, Jongin thinks. The young man wears a red lanyard around his neck, identifying him as an intern. His eyes flick to Jongin, wide and glassy in a flushed face, then lower to the floor again, shoulders hunched. It’s a posture Jongin knows with intimacy, and all the feelings that go with it, and seeing it makes his chest feel tight, so tight it’s hard to breathe.

The woman lowers her hand and glares at Jongin.

“What’s going on?” Jongin’s voice comes out like a rasp.

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with,” the woman snaps. “Mind your own business.”

Jongin swallows, or tries to. His throat is so dry it hurts. He can’t think straight. He doesn’t know what to do at all.

“That means get out,” the woman says when he doesn’t move or speak. She takes a step towards him and Jongin flinches so badly he cracks his elbow against the doorframe, even though she’s still half a room away. The intern’s head flies up again at the sound and his eyes meet Jongin’s. He shakes his head behind the woman’s back, just a little. Is he telling Jongin to go? Perhaps. But Jongin can’t do that.

“No,” he croaks. “I saw you h-hit him. I don’t know what he did, b-but -” he stops to gasp for breath. The panic is so thick it’s cutting off his air. “But hitting is not okay. Ever.”

The woman leaves the intern and walks towards him. The closer she gets, the more everything around Jongin whites out, until he can barely see anything but her face.

“Who do you think you are?” Her voice seethes with barely suppressed rage, and Jongin is taller than her and stronger, and he shouldn’t be so intimidated but it doesn’t matter, it never mattered, it’s just the same as it always was, and Jongin is weak, and fear chokes him. “How dare you disrespect me? I am his chief and I will discipline my staff as I see fit.”

Jongin is backing up, out of the room and across the corridor. She follows him, a step forward to every one he takes back. In the over-brightness of his panic, he sees the intern scuttle out of the meeting room and disappear around the corner, but his chief has her attention on Jongin now, here in the empty corridor, and the wall is at his back and he has nowhere to go. He needs to inhale, but he hasn’t managed to exhale yet. His eyes go to her name tag and it takes him three attempts to read the words: Heo Youngae, Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

“Kim Jongin,” Dr. Heo is reading his I.D. tag as he reads hers. “Orthopaedics. I should have known. Your department’s full of idiots, no wonder you’re too stupid to know your place. Kids these days don’t know a thing about respect. If your own chief won’t teach you, I guess I’ll have to.” She pushes his shoulder, making him rock into the wall. “On your knees.”

Jongin gets to his knees among the papers he dropped before. He doesn’t care that it’s supposed to be humiliating. He’s so dizzy he’s actually grateful to not have to stand. He knows how this goes. The knowledge is in sharp fingers digging into his shoulders, in an arm pushing against his throat, in the panic of not being allowed to breathe. It’s in the scars on his forearms, in the smell of cigarettes, in the way he chokes back a cry of pain. It’s a hardcover book slammed into his head over and over until his ears are ringing and he can’t see straight.

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Again.”

“I respectfully apologize,” he says in formal language, praying she’ll leave him alone before he throws up on her shoes.

“You don’t question your seniors, you fucking moron.” With this she cuffs him right over his ear, not hard, but he’s so unsteady the blow nearly knocks him right over. He puts a hand on the floor to stop himself falling. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Say it back.”

“I don’t question my seniors.”

“Next time, mind your own business,” she says. “Now pick up all this crap and go do something useful, if that’s even possible.”

Jongin starts to fumble at the papers all around him. His hands are shaking visibly. He daren’t look up. He’s not in his workplace anymore, where he’s an admittedly young but already respected surgeon, praised by his superiors, liked by his colleagues and looked up to by his juniors. He’s twenty-three years old and in the flat they’d shared, and Minah is making him crawl on the kitchen floor to pick up the shards of the plate she’s just broken over his head. There’s blood sliding down his forehead, hot as it gathers in his eyebrow and falls in bright red drops to the floor, and his hands are shaking so much he’s cutting himself on the ceramic shards he’s picking up.

“God, you’re so useless, I don’t know why I bother,” a female voice says above him, and he isn’t sure whether it’s Minah or Dr. Heo he’s hearing.

He’s gathered up all the plate shards - no, the papers. He’s in the hospital corridor and hearing the click of her shoes go distant as she walks away. He has a stack of papers in his shaking hands and everything is way too bright. Nausea crawls up his throat as he stands up and steadies himself with a hand against the wall. He knows he’s close to panicking, close to full-on freaking out. He needs to talk to Taeyeon, or lock himself in a bathroom stall until his head stops spinning. But he can’t. He’s at work and he’s late for ward rounds.

He walks unsteadily towards the elevator. If he keeps moving and keeps breathing and doesn’t let himself think too much, he’ll be okay. He knows he’s not thinking clearly, but he just has to fake it long enough until the panic dials down to a lower level so he can force it into the background and coexist with it, so he won’t fall apart in front of everyone.

The familiarity of the orthopaedics ward takes a little of the buzzing brightness from his vision, but he has to fight a wave of nausea as he greets the residents and interns who are waiting for him to take the second ward round. The round seems to take an eternity. He’s aware he’s getting sidelong glances from the residents. He tries to school his expression, but perhaps they can read something in the way he can’t help flinching when anyone steps a little too close, in the way he has to keep swallowing. When ward rounds are finally over, he drops his clipboard on the nursing station without speaking. His ears feel blocked and thick, and the ringing in them is so loud he can barely hear, the ward so bright he can barely see. He knows too well what this heralds. He rushes to the nearest bathroom, pushes open the door of the nearest stall and doesn't even have time to lock it behind him before he's throwing up into the toilet.

“Christ, Jongin. Were you feeling sick all morning?” The fourth-year resident, Park Hyunshik, has followed him. Jongin stills, curling his hands around the edge of the toilet bowl.

“Go away,” he croaks. "I'm fine."

“Liar.” Hyunshik leans against the doorframe. “What is it? Stomach bug? Food poisoning?”

“Can you please just leave me alone?”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Hyunshik hesitates. “Don’t get up too quick, yeah?”

“I know,” Jongin says. “Now go away.”

Hyunshik sighs but leaves, and Jongin’s alone in the bathroom, sweating, whole body shaking as Minah’s face comes to mind, and it makes him have to throw up again.

When there’s nothing left to bring up he sits on the floor and leans back against the stall wall. His heart is hammering and there’s too much air in his chest. He’s so desperate for air but his lungs won’t push out to let him get more in, and it’s like suffocating, like drowning on dry land. The world is greying out around the edges. He needs to breathe.

Maybe, Jongin thinks, helplessly, as he wraps his arms around his ribs in shallow imitation of one of Taeyeon’s hugs, he’s been doing nothing but choking back emotions for the past six years, trembling to pieces on the inside while life around him continues to march steadily forward. He’s had a lifetime of practice at hiding things away where even he can’t find them, but now it’s all come lashing back like a rubber band snapping into his face, unleashing an ocean to drown him. And here he is again, just like he was six years ago, shaking and crying and unable to breathe, as if all those six years of healing were for nothing.

Six years ago there was a warm hand on the nape of his neck and a shoulder to lean his head on. There was a voice counting calmly into his ear, not minding that he couldn’t manage to match the numbers with his breaths at first. Though his dizziness and his shaking Jongin remembers, and he starts to count in his head. He knows how to get through this. Lee Taeyeon taught him how, in a bathroom just like this one, in a different hospital on the other side of the city.

It takes ten minutes of sitting and counting before panic’s grip on his ribs eases enough to let him exhale fully, and another ten of just breathing before he can get to his feet. He flushes the toilet and goes out to wash his hands. He scoops water into his mouth and spits into the sink. He glances in the mirror and regrets it. His face is the bluish-white of skimmed milk. But he’ll be okay. He has to be. He has a lot of patients to see today.

By the time his shift is finally over he’s twitchy and exhausted, and there’s a buzzing noise at the back of his head that just won’t go away. He sits in his car and his hands grip the steering wheel. He doesn’t know where to go. He should go home, but his apartment doesn’t feel like home anymore, because it’s not where Sohee is.

He leans his head on the steering wheel and shuts his eyes. He desperately wants to go to Sohee, but she’s never seen him like this. She doesn’t know, and it’s Jongin’s fault she doesn’t. He promised Taeyeon months ago that he would tell her, but he’s been a pathetic coward, as usual, putting it off, putting it out of his mind. What he has with Sohee feels like a beautiful, fragile bubble, and if he’s not careful he will burst it. He wants Sohee to keep seeing him how she does now. He doesn’t want her to know what he's really like, how pathetic, how useless, how easily broken he is. People hate him when they know.

But doesn’t really think she’ll hate him. At first he worried, of course he did, but he knows her better now.

“I trust her,” he says aloud, and hears how his voice is trembling. “I trust her. I do.”

He’d trusted Minah, too.

“She’s not like Minah.” It’s lucky he’s locked in his car, the way he’s talking to himself. “Most people aren’t. It was just bad luck, like Sehun said. “Fucking rotten luck.”” His best friend's words come out with a half-gasped laugh, the curse tasting strange on his tongue, because he never swears.

He could talk to Taeyeon, of course. She’s always there for him. But she’s not the person he wants right now. The one his heart longs for is Sohee.

“I don’t have to tell her today,” he says to himself. “I could just go and be with her. She never pushes. She never asks. She’ll understand. Well, maybe not understand exactly, how could she when I haven’t told her, but she’ll let me be.”

He drives to Sohee’s house with the windows rolled right down, and the wind blasts icy through the car, making his hair go wild and his eyes tear up, stinging his ears and numbing his fingers, but he doesn’t wind them up, because he keeps thinking he smells cigarette smoke, keeps tasting it in the back of his throat. When he gets to Sohee’s house it’s after six, and her car is parked in the driveway. He didn’t message her he was coming, didn’t even think of it. She’s told him he’s welcome to come any time, to treat her place as his own, no matter when or even if she’s home or not, but perhaps he should have messaged her this time, because he’s not exactly in a normal space. He wants to be normal, though, and that means coming to Sohee’s the way he always does.

He goes upstairs and opens her door with the key she gave him. The Japanese chime hanging above the door sings musically, and the house has the familiar clean smell of her laundry powder. It replaces the cigarettes, and he closes his eyes and breathes it in.

“Jongin, is that you?” Sohee has heard the chime. There’s a smile in her voice as her footsteps come closer. Jongin opens his eyes and tries to find the way to his smile. She comes out of the kitchen, the sleeves of a gigantic hoodie that would be big even on Jongin shoved up to her elbows, hair in a wispy knot right on top of her head. Her face has lit up in the special way it does when she looks at him. Jongin’s chest, which has felt so impossibly tight all day that he can barely take half of a full breath, finally loosens, and with it something inside him cracks, and so does his face.

“Hey, hey...” Sohee’s voice is gentle as her arms slide around his waist. She reaches up to his face, and when her thumb brushes his cheek, Jongin realises he’s crying.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He tries to wipe his face but more tears just keep coming out. “I don’t know why…”

“Shh, it’s okay. Come on, come inside.” She leads him into the lounge and they sit down on the couch, where she lets Jongin pull her close. He buries his face in her shoulder, and she combs a soothing hand through his hair.

“Sorry,” he says, “I shouldn’t have...I didn’t mean…” his sentences keep getting swallowed by tears.

“Did something happen at work?”

He shakes his head, then nods. “Yeah,” he says, “something happened, but I thought I was okay now. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

“Jongin, it’s okay,” Sohee says. She’s tucked warm and close into his side, her face turned up to his. “You can cry in front of me, as well as smile.” She nestles in a little closer. “All those things about yourself that you want to hide from me - the things you think are bad, or silly, or scary, or painful - they’re all just part of what makes you Jongin, and every part of you is perfect to me.”

Jongin has remembered how to smile again. It trembles at the corners of his lips. He closes his eyes and feels the warmth and weight of her, the perfect way she fits against him, her softness to his edges, and the anxiety that was threatening to drown him all day slowly starts to fade. Here, there’s only quietness, and safety, and Sohee in his arms.

“Do you remember a couple of months ago, when I said I had something to tell you sometime, but I wasn’t ready to say it yet?”

“Yes,” she says. “I remember.”

“I’ve been putting off telling you for ages, because you coming into my life was like a dream, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t ruin it,” Sohee says, “because it’s not a dream, Jongin.” He opens his eyes and finds her smiling at him, her eyes scrunching up the way they do. “We’re already awake.”

“I guess you’re right,” he says, and the new looseness of his chest lets his heart expand a little further.

“I guessed from pretty early on that you’ve been through something rough,” Sohee says, “and if you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be glad to listen, because it’ll be easier for me to know when something’s hard for you, and then I can help you. But it’s up to you. It will always be your choice.”

Jongin breathes out shakily. “I want to tell you,” he says. “Because….because I trust you.”

Her face is solemn as she nods, and her eyes fix on him gravely. She takes his cold hand in her warm one, and as she gently strokes the back of his hand with her thumb, Jongin tells her.

\---

When Jongin was little, he used to wait at the top of the stairs of his big, beautiful house for his father to come home from work. He wasn’t supposed to leave his rooms unless he was told, but they never saw him if he stayed right at the top, half-hidden behind the corner of the wall. He would watch his father take off his coat and change his shoes, and his mother would come out of the drawing room in a beautiful dress, with her hair done up in a silky black twist. They’d exchange greetings in polite language, and his mother would give his father a kiss on the cheek, the exact same place every time. Then his father would walk into his study and his mother would drift back into the drawing room. Jongin would watch them go, and his heart would clench with longing. He’d wait there, hoping to steal another glimpse, until whichever au pair he had at the moment noticed him out on the landing and called him back.

The au pairs came from many different places and changed often, so often that Jongin would sometimes get their names mixed up. Some of them would teach him little bits of their languages, and Jongin would get those mixed up too, addressing Malika from England in German, or Mary from the Philippines in Chinese. Some of them were affectionate, giving him hugs and telling him he was a good boy, and Jongin would cling all the harder, desperate for a share of the love he craved. But the nicer they were to him, the worse it was when they left. They always left, no matter how good Jongin was.

“I’m sorry to do this to you, Jongin-chan,” Kimi from Japan told him, her round eyes filling with tears to match Jongin’s own as she packed her suitcase, “because you’re a sweet little boy, but I just can’t take it anymore. It’s colder in this house than Sapporo in December.”

It was summer, and they were both wearing shorts and t-shirts that were clingy with humidity, and Jongin hadn’t understood. He’d stood there, watching her pack and trying unsuccessfully not to cry, and next week Emma had arrived, with a long blonde plait that reached her waist and a totally different English accent than Malika had had.

Emma only stayed four weeks, and she asked him before she left, “Did your parents have an arranged marriage?”

“What does that mean?” Jongin asked. His English was nearly as good as his Japanese, and he’d gotten the hang of her Yorkshire accent now, but he hadn’t heard the term before.

“Did they get married because they were told to by someone else?” Emma was plaiting her hair swiftly, a thick sun-coloured rope growing beneath her hands. She’d let Jongin plait her hair too, and he’d liked twisting the silky golden strands together, but he was hurting too much inside to ask her to let him do it now. “Because I find it hard to believe it was for love.”

Jongin hadn’t known, so the next time he’d seen his mother, when she’d had a lot of other prettily-dressed ladies over and the new au pair from Thailand whose name he hadn’t learned to pronounce yet had brushed his hair flat and made him wear a stiff white shirt that prickled and taken him down to greet them politely, he’d bowed to each of the ladies as he’d been taught, then turned to his mother and asked, “Did you have an arranged marriage, mother?”

His mother had gone very still, and then given a long, tinkling laugh that sounded a bit to Jongin like the way a glass sounded when it shattered on the floor.

“Children are just so direct,” one of the ladies had cooed, and “isn’t he adorable!” said another. His mother had cut her eyes at the au pair waiting by the door, and she’d come and taken his hand and pulled him back upstairs.

“What did I do wrong?” Jongin asked her in English, which was the only language they shared, because she’d only been there for five days and he hadn’t learned enough Thai yet.

“What did you say to your mother?” the au pair asked, and Jongin translated.

“Ah. It’s rude to ask questions like that,” the girl told him, and though her voice was mild, Jongin flushed with shame. Being rude was bad, and his mother wouldn’t look at him again for weeks now.

When Jongin got older, he understood a little better. Emma had been right. His parents did not love each other. Their marriage was a business arrangement to solidify the relationship between subsidiary companies of a family-owned conglomerate, and he was the prerequisite child to show off at gatherings and put away tidily again after. That was why they never wanted to take him anywhere, or do anything fun with him, or spend time with him beyond educating him in proper manners. He wasn’t important in their lives. They didn’t really love him.

Jongin understood this, but all the same, he couldn’t stop loving them. He couldn’t stop trying, always, to do the best he could, with the desperate hope of earning a smile, a word of approval from his father, his mother’s hand cupping the back of his head. He sometimes got those things when he was being introduced to important people in the family business. His father would say how Jongin’s grades were perfect, and his mother would say he never got into any trouble, and they’d say he must take after whichever important relative they wanted to please at the moment, so Jongin made sure to keep getting perfect grades and being good, so as not to lose the only chances he got at feeling loved, just for a moment or two.

In his last year of high school, he’d plucked up his courage and brought his art portfolio down to his father’s study one evening. He slid it onto his desk tentatively and his father looked up at him over his glasses, expressionless.

“What’s this?”

“It’s, um,” Jongin started, trying not to stammer, even though his father looking at him directly made him very nervous. He clasped his hands behind his back to hide their shaking. “It’s what I want to do at university.”

His father looked down at the portfolio and flipped the cover open. Jongin watched his face, fingers twisting tight behind his back, trying to read the impassive face. His father flipped over two or three works, then looked back up at him, eyebrows lowering.

“You’ve been wasting time drawing instead of studying?”

Jongin shook his head. “I’ve still been studying, I always put that first, and my grades are still perfect,” he said quickly. “But there’s an art club at school, and the teacher who runs it, he said I...I have t-talent.” He stuttered over the word. He’d never praised himself in front of his father before. “He said I could get into an art course on the strength of my portfolio, even though I haven’t studied it in high school. And, and...I really love art. So I thought, maybe…”

His father slapped the cover of his portfolio closed. It sounded final, like a door slamming closed, and Jongin had to fight the reaction to flinch.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Art isn’t a career. You know you’re to study medicine.”

Jongin bit his lip. He’d known this was going to happen, had expected it really, but still, despite all he’d told himself to try and prepare, the refusal hurt. The backs of his eyes prickled with tears, and he blinked hard. He mustn’t cry. He was nearly nineteen, and a man, and his father had taught him that crying showed weakness, and men should not be weak.

“Yes, I know,” he tried again, not quite able to give up. “But I…”

“Are you arguing with me?” His father half stood up, one hand raised, and this time Jongin could not hide his flinch as the lessons in manners his father had taught him came flooding back.

“No, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Take that ridiculous thing away, and don’t let me hear of this nonsense again,” his father said. “I don’t want you wasting your time drawing or going to art clubs any more. Do you understand?”

Jongin understood. He took back his portfolio and shut it away on the top shelf of his wardrobe, along with his pencils and sketchbooks and paints, and with them he shut his dreams away forever.

Jongin was halfway through his intern year when his parents introduced him to yet another sombre, suited businessman, his wife, and their beautiful, sharp-eyed daughter, Kwon Minah. He’d seen her before. She was a second-year resident in haematology at the same hospital he was doing his internship at, and Jongin was surprised to see her at one of the business networking events disguised as “family gatherings”, wearing a pretty dress and high heels instead of jeans and a white coat. It turned out that Minah, like Jongin, was a child of a subsidiary company, groomed to marry in a way that would secure business alliances. The set-up was so blatant that Jongin felt almost dizzy with embarrassment, but Kwon Minah smiled at him anyway, and was so sweet to him that his shyness slowly started to ebb away. At the end of their third date Minah kissed him and told him she loved him, and Jongin, who had never had anyone tell him that before, gravitated to her like a comet captured by the sun.

Perhaps she really did love him, at first. She told him he was precious and sweet, and she liked it when he bought her things, the kind of things he knew his girl cousins liked, designer handbags and shoes and jewellery. It was so easy to please Minah, at first, and Jongin’s comet was pulled inexorably closer to the burning sun, and his layers of ice began to boil away.

They’d been together for just under a year when she first hurt him. Jongin had moved in with Minah two months earlier, at the same time as starting his first year of residency, while Minah was starting her third. It was over such a silly thing. She had a magnetic notepad on the fridge, with a matching silver pen that clipped to it, and they would write down the things they were getting low on so they could buy them when they were off-shift. One day Jongin got home, dead on his feet at the end of a 40-hour shift, and Minah was waiting for him at the door. He smiled and leaned in to kiss her, and she put her hand on his chest and shoved him back, so hard and unexpected he fell against the wall.

“Minah, what -?”

“Where’s the pen?”

“The pen?” He was so confused.

“The silver pen! The one on the fridge! You know it always has to stay there! I told you never to move it!” She got closer with every sentence, and usually Jongin liked it when she got close, but she was different today, all sharp edges and clenched fists and fury bleeding in from the corners of her eyes.

“I haven’t moved the pen,” he said, racking through his tired brains to make sure this was true. “I haven’t even been home in two days -”

“Liar!” she screamed. She grabbed the nearest thing on the shelf by the door, a wooden bowl in which they dropped their keys and other random things that didn’t have a proper home, and cracked it against the side of his head. The keys and oddments in it flew everywhere, and Jongin cried out in shock and pain. He pressed his hand to his head and stared at her, bewildered, and when she went to hit him again, he caught her wrist to stop her.

“Minah,” he said, “that really hurt!”

“It was supposed to, idiot!” She wrenched her hand from his grip. “I told you never to move that pen and you ignored me!”

“I really didn’t - ow!” The bowl smashed into his cheekbone this time, and he saw stars. She stood in front of him, panting and trembling, fingers pressed white where she gripped the bowl, eyes stretched wide.

“Aren’t you going to hit me back?” she gasped, and Jongin genuinely could not tell if she was furious or terrified. He reached out for her, but she knocked his hand violently away.

“No, Minah, of course I’m not,” he said, and the bowl came down on his head again with an audible crack. She’d split the wood. Tears sprang to Jongin’s eyes as he clutched his head.

“No? You won’t hit back?” Her face twisted strangely. “Are you going to cry, then? Cry like a baby?” Minah was speaking in gasps. “Go on, then! You act like a clingy five-year-old anyway, you might as well go the whole way!”

The hits from the wooden bowl were painful, but her words stabbed Jongin in a different, deeper way. He cringed against the wall while she hit him again and again. Eventually she dropped the cracked bowl on the floor and ran and locked herself in their bedroom, and Jongin sat down right there in the entrance amidst the scattered keys, tearful and aching and confused.

Jongin later found the pen where it had rolled under the kitchen cabinet opposite the fridge, evidently having fallen or been knocked off by accident. He clipped it carefully back to the notepad, and when she’d calmed down, she hugged him and stroked the bruise on his cheekbone and the lumps on his head with gentle fingers. She'd told him how sorry she was, and how much she loved him. Jongin forgave her willingly. He loved her, and she was the first person who’d ever loved him.

It only got worse from there. She began to hit him any time something went wrong around the house, picking up whatever object was close to hand to clobber him with. Every time she hurt him, she’d come back later with soft touches and apologies, sometimes even crying. Jongin couldn’t bear to see her cry. “It’s okay,” he’d say, “I’m fine, it doesn’t really hurt. I know you didn’t mean it. I love you.” She’d promise she’d never do it again, but every time, she broke her promise. Jongin became more nervous around her, never sure what he could safely do, what might set her off. Her rules changed all the time and he couldn’t keep up. He couldn’t defend himself against her. He was scared he’d hurt her. She was so much smaller than him. She knew that, and she’d sometimes taunt him in her rages. “Go on,” she screamed as he tried to block the sharp-edged photo frame she was swinging into his head, afraid it would cut him. “Hit me back, go on! Defend yourself!” and when he wouldn’t, she’d say, with an odd, trembling triumph in her voice, “I’m more powerful than you, aren’t I? You’re a guy, you’re bigger and stronger, but you can’t even stand up to a little girl like me.”

Jongin just didn’t understand what she wanted from him. He let his defending arm fall, and the edge of the photo frame put a bleeding gouge through his eyebrow.

“What happened?” It was the first thing Sehun said when he stepped through the apartment door the next afternoon. Jongin and Sehun had gotten places in residency programmes at different hospitals, but they still hung out whenever they could, and they knew each other’s study habits so well by now that it was second nature to meet up and study together. Sehun was preparing an application to a six-month residency exchange programme with an American hospital, and he was laden with an armload of heavy textbooks, journals and files of printed case studies, a plastic bag full of junk food swinging from his elbow. Minah was on shift and wouldn’t be home until later.

“Huh?” Jongin blinked, confused, and Sehun frowned as he shifted his load into his right arm. His left hand went up to gently touch the gash through Jongin’s eyebrow, and Jongin flinched. He’d forgotten he hadn’t covered it. He’d actually not even seen the cut, avoiding his gaze in the bathroom mirror out of habit. He hated to think about the things she did to him and seeing the injuries made them impossible to ignore.

“Oh, that,” he said. “I...walked into a door last night.”

“You must have hit pretty hard to cut yourself like that.” Sehun was still frowning. “You should cover it. You don’t want it getting infected so near your eye.”

“It’s nothing,” Jongin said. He followed Sehun into the living room, where his friend dropped his armload onto the coffee table with a heavy thud and turned back to Jongin.

“It’s not nothing, stupid, have you even seen it? Where’s your first aid kit?”

Jongin knew that stubborn look on Sehun’s face. He went into the kitchen and got the first aid kit out of the cupboard under the sink, and sat on the coffee table while Sehun dabbed antiseptic onto his cut. It stung badly, but Jongin didn’t wince. He was learning how to hide it when things hurt. “You’re not usually clumsy,” Sehun said as he found a pack of butterfly strips and opened them.

“I just wasn’t paying attention,” Jongin mumbled. Then he heard the front door open, and he jerked in surprise and alarm. Minah was back early.

“Dude,” Sehun laughed. Jongin’s flinch had made him accidentally stick one of the butterfly strips to the centre of his forehead. “Hold still! What are you, five?”

Humiliation curled in Jongin’s stomach. He knew Sehun meant nothing by it, but Minah said that kind of thing to him too, and the association was strong. He couldn’t stop himself tensing up as Minah’s footsteps came towards the lounge. Sehun peeled the misplaced strip off his forehead and started placing a new one across the cut, holding the edges together, but Jongin only had eyes for Minah standing in the doorway. Her face was blank as her eyes flicked from Jongin to Sehun. Jongin felt cold.

“You’re back early,” he said. It came out sounding more uncertain than he’d meant.

Minah walked into the room, tossed her backpack onto the couch, and flopped down beside it behind Sehun’s back. “My chief shortened my shift today because he needs me to stay late tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was light, but she didn’t smile, and her eyes narrowed as she stared at Jongin over Sehun’s shoulder. “Hi, Sehun. I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“Hey, Minah,” Sehun was still focused on closing Jongin’s cut and didn’t glance around, but he smiled as he spoke. “We were going to study for a while, but I didn’t think I’d get a practical workshop too.” He smirked at Jongin, who did his best to grin back.

“Should I walk into doors more often, just for you?” he asked teasingly, and on the couch Minah relaxed, just a tiny bit.

“Dude, I’m going into dermatology. Pick up scabies or something if you really want to give me practice,” Sehun said, and Minah made a dramatic noise of disgust.

“No way, I’m not having scabies in my apartment,” she said, and Jongin relaxed a little too as his best friend and his girlfriend started to bicker playfully. Minah was being normal today. She went to shower and change, then brought something she was working on into the lounge too, and they all worked together for a few hours while the TV behind them played a series of dumb variety shows. Minah was being so friendly to Sehun and so sweet to Jongin. She was the girl he’d fallen in love with again, and Jongin started to hope that maybe things would be okay again now.

Things were not okay. When Sehun had gone Minah’s smile dropped as if a light had been turned off in her face. She turned to Jongin and said, “I never said you could have Sehun over here.”

“I…” Jongin’s heart plummeted. Her face was dark, angry. “Is that...not okay? You never minded before.”

“Why are you so friendly with that guy?” She was backing him up into the kitchen. “I hate him.”

“What?” Jongin was astonished. Minah and Sehun had never been anything but friendly to each other, and they’d gotten on so well today. “But -”

“I wanted to be with you this afternoon and you were too busy with Sehun to pay me any attention at all.” Minah’s teeth were gritted. “And what did I find when I came in? Him taking care of you like _he’s_ your girlfriend!” She reached up and flicked the now-covered cut on his eyebrow. Jongin couldn’t hold back his cry of pain. Just the flick itself would have hurt, and right onto the cut it was agonizing.

“Do you like him better than me?” Minah’s voice was rising.

Jongin shook his head desperately. “It’s not like that -”

“Shut up,” she hissed. “Don’t hang out with that guy anymore. I don’t want him in our apartment and I don’t want you meeting him either. You’re mine, Jongin. You should be with me and nobody else.”

“Minah,” Jongin tried to speak calmly, but he was scared of her when she was like this, and his voice came out shaky. “Sehun’s my best friend. It’s different -”

“I said SHUT UP!” She grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged downwards, forcing him to his knees, snatched a cookbook off the shelf and started raining blows onto his head. The book didn’t hurt as much as some of the things she’d hit him with, but the repeated blows were stunning. “I’m your girlfriend,” she yelled. “I should be the one you love best!”

“You are!” Jongin cried. “Minah - please -”

The book dropped to the floor with a thump, and Jongin clasped both hands to his head, ears ringing. He could barely see straight, but suddenly Minah was on her knees in front of him, reaching for him. He recoiled, but her arms went around him, and she buried her face in his shoulder. She was shaking, crying.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just got so sad, because I thought you loved me best, and now you like Sehun better than me -”

Jongin was dizzy and half-dazed, but he couldn’t bear to hear her cry. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. “Shh,” he whispered. “Minah, it’s okay. You misunderstood, that’s all. I don’t like Sehun better than you. You’re my girlfriend and I love you best, like you said.”

“Then will you stop hanging out with him?”

Jongin’s heart twisted as he thought of Sehun. They’d both been so shy it had taken them weeks to get past the barrier of mutual awkwardness, but once they’d done that, they’d found they were kindred spirits. They understood each other so well. Four years of rooming together, studying, gaming, going along to social gatherings together where they’d be too shy and awkward to go alone, flashed before his eyes.

“If you really love me you’ll stop hanging out with him,” Minah said.

“If that’s really what you want,” Jongin said, and the weight of sadness settled over him.

Minah pushed away from him and wiped her face on her sleeve, suddenly calm. “Yes,” she said, voice steady. “Because you’re my boyfriend. You’re mine. All mine.”

Jongin made excuses the next couple of times Sehun messaged him, telling him residency was eating him alive, guilt clawing at him when Sehun sent back a sad-faced emoji in return and told him not to work too hard. Then Sehun was accepted to the residency exchange programme he’d applied for and left for America, and Jongin was alone and isolated in his deteriorating orbit around Minah.

After a couple more black eyes and facial injuries had forced him to make awkward excuses at work, Minah stopped hitting his face and moved on to make marks on him more easily hidden. Her car keys became a weapon, and he was speckled with small, deep bruises. One night they were sitting together on the sofa, and Minah was smoking. Jongin reached tentatively for her hand, and she took the cigarette from her mouth and pressed the burning end down on his forearm. Jongin yelled and yanked his arm away.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

“You don’t touch me unless I say so,” she said. She grabbed his wrist and pressed her still-burning cigarette onto his arm again, leaning all her weight on him to keep him from pulling away. It hurt so much Jongin struggled, even though he didn’t usually fight her, but he was still afraid to use all his strength against her, and the cigarette burned a deep circular blister into his forearm.

Jongin learned to hide his arms beneath a long-sleeved t-shirt worn under his scrubs. Home became a place to fear, and work was little better, because Minah was there too, ready to pull him into corners and kiss him roughly while she raked her fingernails down his arms, knowing she dragged them through multiple half-healed burns, making him writhe as he gritted his teeth to keep the cry of pain in.

“Is it normal,” Jongin asked Sehun cautiously over the phone one night “for a girlfriend to, like...hurt you?” He was sitting on the back steps of the hospital at midnight, uneasy and on edge, because he knew he shouldn’t be talking to Sehun, and even though Minah was at home and not on call, he couldn’t shake the anxiety that came with knowing he was breaking the rules. His voice echoed fuzzily down the international connection, and there was a lag just a little longer than there normally was before Sehun replied.

“Hurt you how?” he asked. “Like, in a way you don’t want her to?”

“Mm,” Jongin said, and the fingers of his free hand went to lightly touch the front of his shirt. She’d burned a row of circles into his ribs last light, kneeling on his hips as the cigarette seared his skin. “You see?” She’d whispered through the acrid reek of smoke. “I have complete control of you.” Her eyes had been so flat Jongin had been too scared to even move.

“Did you tell her to stop?” Sehun asked.

“I…” Jongin bit his lip hard. “When I do...she says...she tells me to make her. She tells me to hurt her back, and when I won’t, she says I’m pathetic and useless, and a real man wouldn’t let her do this to him.” He flushed with shame even admitting it to Sehun, who was an ocean and a continent away. “Maybe she’s right,” he mumbled. “If I wasn’t so pathetic, she wouldn’t -”

“Bullshit.” Sehun sounded angry, which was how Jongin knew he’d worried him. His stomach clenched. “Jongin, that’s - that’s fucking twisted.” Sehun went quiet for a long moment, and Jongin tried not to let his tell-tale ragged breathing fill the space. “You can’t listen to that kind of crap, man. Don’t believe her.”

“I just...” It was getting hard to string words together. “I thought…” _I thought she loved me,_ he wanted to say, but it sounded so pathetic, even to him.

“Jongin? Talk to me, bro. How does she hurt you?”

“Cigarette burns,” he mumbled, _and scratches, and stabbing me with keys, and hitting me with anything she can get her hands on_ , but even just admitting to the burns made him feel like he was going to throw up.

Sehun started cursing a blue streak, and it almost made Jongin chuckle, but amusement was something inaccessible to him right now. He waited until Sehun wound down, and then he said, “So it’s not...girls don’t usually...this isn’t…” his chest was so tight it was hard to form coherent sentences, but Sehun understood anyway.

“No,” he said. “No, Jongin, it’s not normal. It’s not okay. It’s fucking sick. You need to get out of that. You’re still living with her, right? Shit,” he cursed again. “Can you go stay with your parents?”

Jongin thought of his cold house, with his cold parents in it, _colder than Sapporo in December_ , a long-ago phrase in Japanese wreathed around him, and he shivered despite his long sleeves and the fact it was July. “I guess,” he whispered.

“God, I feel so fucking helpless,” Sehun muttered. “Listen, Jongin. I know she’s your first partner. This is really fucking rotten luck. But it’s not normal. It’s abuse.”

Jongin's stomach lurched. “It’s not…”

“It is.” Sehun sounded very sure. “It is abuse and if you think about it, you know it. So promise me you’ll get out, okay?”

“Okay,” Jongin said, and the word sounded so very small for something that was so horrifically big.

Jongin had moved out of his parents' house, silently and angrily, when he’d started his first year of university, resenting that he was studying pre-med and not art. Now he only saw his parents once every two or three months, when his father would call him over to show his face at a “family dinner” to which he had invited whichever high-up businessmen he wanted to curry favour with. His mother would introduce Jongin as “our son, who is a surgeon”, and Jongin would give his politest, blankest smile and wish he was anywhere else. He never went over of his own accord anymore. He understood, now, what Kimi from Japan had meant. But he had nowhere else to turn, so a couple of days later he called his mother to let her know he’d be joining them for the evening meal.

“I have something I need to tell you,” he said when they were seated, his father at the head of the table, his mother opposite Jongin, ice all around them.

“After dinner,” his father said, and the only sound for the next half hour was the clink of silver against ceramic. Jongin could barely eat a thing. His stomach was in knots. When the serving staff had cleared everything away without commenting, as they always did, his father looked at him. Jongin wanted to fidget, but he didn’t. He held himself very, very still.

“I am going to break up with Minah,” he said. He’d rehearsed it so much in his head it came out overly formal, robotic. “I will need a place to stay until I find a new apartment. May I stay here until then?”

There was a silence while both of them looked at him. Jongin shivered.

“Don’t be silly,” his mother said. It was unusual for her to speak before his father, but maybe it was because it was about his girlfriend. “Whatever spat you’ve had, apologize to her and fix things up. The families approve of you and Minah together. They'll be expecting your engagement soon.”

“It’s not a spat,” Jongin said, trying not to show his panic at the word _engagement_. “We don’t...I can’t...I can’t stay with her anymore.”

“It’s not negotiable,” his father said. “Minah’s family are shareholders. Marriage will strengthen our position.”

“You got on fine until now,” his mother said. “Buy her some flowers and apologize.”

They didn’t understand. Jongin felt sick. He’d have to tell them, or they’d never let him escape. “It’s not like that. She,” his voice cracked. “She hurts me.”

“Explain.” His father's face was stony.

“I…if I do anything...if I make a mistake...she...she hits me…and…” his chest was so tight he could barely breathe.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his father sounded disgusted. “A little girl like that? She can’t possibly hurt you.”

“But she does,” Jongin choked, and his eyes were burning. His father saw the tears in them and his face went thunderous.

“Don’t you dare cry,” he said. “Act your age. You’re a disgrace. Are you going to be this pathetic all your life? You’re going to let a girl walk all over you? If you were a real man, she wouldn’t dare.”

Jongin couldn’t control his shaking. He couldn’t control his tears either, and they spilled over. His father saw them, and looked at Jongin with disgust.

“I’m ashamed of you,” he said. “Get a hold of yourself. Show a little spine for once in your life.”

“If you don’t like Minah hitting you,” his mother added, “perhaps you should stop deserving it.”

The despair Jongin felt then was something so heavy he thought it would drown him. They stared at him, both of them, and there was such disgust in their eyes.

He stood up and bowed to them silently. He should have apologized too, they would have been expecting it, but his throat was locked too tight to speak. He left his parents’ house and drove back to his apartment, unable to stop the tears from sliding down his face. He didn’t know what else to do, and he had nowhere else to go. Perhaps they were right about him, his parents. He couldn’t deny that he was weak. Even now he was unable to stop crying. Maybe he did deserve what she did to him. So he went back home, where Minah waited with her cigarettes.

After that, Jongin had withdrawn inside himself so much people started to notice.

“You never talk anymore,” the second year resident complained. “You never want to do anything. You’ve gone all boring.”

“I’m just tired,” Jongin mumbled, and pulled the sleeves of his t-shirt into his hands. She’d burned a little too close to his wrists last night.

“Jongin, are you feeling alright?” The department chief, Dr. Lee Taeyeon, pulled him aside after ward rounds. “You’re very quiet. Is anything worrying you?”

Jongin clutched his sleeves tighter than ever. “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I’ll work harder.”

“I’m not scolding you,” Dr. Lee said gently. “Residency is challenging, especially at first. I just want to make sure you’re doing okay. You’ve got a lot of potential, Jongin, that’s why I accepted you into my programme, and I don’t want you to burn out. If you need to take a week or two off, just tell me. We’ll manage.”

“I’m not burning out,” Jongin hung his head. “I’m just…” he stopped, unable to think of something to say. Taeyeon reached towards his face, most likely to put her fingers beneath his chin and lift his head to look at her, but Jongin, only used to touches that hurt, jerked back so violently he lost his balance and had to catch himself against the wall. Dr. Lee stared at him in astonishment and the beginnings of real concern, and Jongin knew his overreaction had been so great he could not easily explain it away.

“Excuse me,” he stammered, and turned and fled down the corridor before she could say a word, tears starting in his eyes. _Just like a five-year-old_ , Minah jeered in his head, and Jongin knew she was right.

A few days later Dr. Lee told him he would be assisting her on an ACL reconstruction the next day in the OR, and for a moment the world became a little less bleak. He’d never assisted before, and Dr. Lee was one of the world’s leading surgeons for ACL reconstructions. He read up on the procedure the night before to prepare himself and got to the scrubbing area early to make sure he didn’t hold her up. The scrub nurse smiled at him when he appeared.

“I hear you’re assisting today, Jongin?”

“Yes, my first time,” Jongin said, smiling back. It was the first time he’d smiled in weeks, but it slipped again at her next words.

“You’ll have to take your t-shirt off, I’m afraid. We allow observers and non-sterile staff to wear tidy clothing under scrubs, but Dr. Lee is strict with the rules for people working in the sterile field. You’ll be wearing a long-sleeved surgical gown, though, so it shouldn’t be too cold.”

Jongin felt like he was plunging down in a too-fast elevator. She was assuming he wore the t-shirt because he got cold easily. But his arms were littered with half-healed burns, and the scrub nurse would see them when she put his gown on him. His stomach clenched so tight it hurt, and fear rose up in his throat, and it tasted of ashes, of cigarette smoke.

He went into the changing room to take off his t-shirt, slipping his baggy short-sleeved scrub top back on over his bare skin. It had been so long since he’d worn short sleeves with nothing under them that he felt weirdly exposed. He glanced down at his arms and felt sick. He always avoided looking at them, because he hated the reminder so much, but now he was shocked by just how bad it looked, how blatantly obvious the circular burns were on his pale skin. Some of them were bad enough to scab over, white on angry red. Older ones had scarred. He pressed his arms to his sides, hiding as much of them as he could as he walked quickly back to the scrubbing area, where he lathered up quickly, hiding the burns beneath the foamy antimicrobial soap. Soon Dr. Lee came in and stood next to him at the sinks. She smiled and asked him how he was doing and some questions about the upcoming surgery, and Jongin answered the questions carefully and scrubbed as slowly as he could so that she would finish first. As soon as the scrub nurse was helping Dr. Lee with her gear, Jongin hurried over to the second pile of gear she’d set out and turned away as he wriggled into the gown on his own. The moment his arms were covered it had felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his chest. He’d made it. Now he could focus properly on the surgery.

He forgot about his arms and his fear during the surgery. Dr. Lee was a generous teacher, talking him through what she was doing and letting him close up. She praised him when they were leaving the OR for his good work. They started to discuss parts of the surgery, and Jongin was so interested that when Dr. Lee had pulled off her gown to throw it away, Jongin did the same without thinking. He shoved it into the receptacle on top of hers, along with his gloves and cap, and was turning to the sink when Dr. Lee cut off mid-sentence, going oddly silent. Jongin looked at her, wondering what was wrong, and found Dr. Lee staring at his arms. His heart stopped.

“Oh,” he said, and tried instinctively to hide the burns by pulling his arms close to his chest, but it was impossible to hide them, they were everywhere. Dr. Lee looked up at him, her face slack with shock as she stared at Jongin, and Jongin felt sick with it, nauseated and helpless as he waited for her to react in some way he could understand.

“Jongin,” she said, and something inside Jongin cracked.

“I - I have to use the bathroom,” he said, and Dr. Lee’s eyes went from shocked to alarmed. “Jongin, wait -”

He didn’t wait to hear her finish, pushing past her to rush into the bathroom attached to the scrubbing area, where he immediately threw up. He hunched over the toilet, shivering, hearing the sound of Dr. Lee running the water of the scrubbing sink outside. All he could think was _she saw_.

“Jongin?” Dr. Lee had come in. Jongin would have been mortified if there’d been any space left for that beyond the panic and the nausea. She went right down on her knees beside him on the floor in the toilet stall, and she was a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon and Jongin was nothing, she shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be making her do this, it was all so wrong. But she was here, and when Jongin stole a hunted glance at her face he saw no judgment in it. There was nothing but concern and compassion in her face, and it looked so much like how a mother should look at a child, if Jongin had ever had a mother who cared at all, that it was a stab straight to his aching chest. “Jongin,” she said gently. “Is it okay if I help you?”

Jongin was so wrecked that he just nodded in spite of everything. Dr. Lee carefully pulled his hair back from his face and supported his forehead with her hand.

“This is so s-stupid,” he croaked, and the nausea hadn’t abated. He tried to throw up again, whole body spasming as he lurched against her hand, but nothing came up. “I’m s-sorry…” Dr. Lee looked more worried than ever, and Jongin just couldn’t understand why she was worrying about him.

“Tell me?” She made it a question, still holding his head.

“I…” his words got stuck, so he turned and leaned forward enough to rest his head on her shoulder instead, closing his eyes. He was shaking. Her hands left his head and went around him. All the panic that had been chasing at Jongin for the past months, nipping at his heels like hungry hyenas caught up with him then, right there, sitting on a bathroom floor with Dr. Lee Taeyeon’s arms around him and panic choking him blue now he’d cleared out the bile.

Dr. Lee talked him through the panic. She rubbed his back and counted calmly into his ear, guiding him through the waves. When his breathing settled a little and his violent trembling had started to fade, she talked to him. At first he couldn’t really make sense of her words, just listening to the calmness of her voice and slowly, slowly relaxing, until he started to hear the words. She talked about her family, about her two daughters roughly Jongin’s age, and how the older daughter used to get panic attacks when she was a teenager so Dr. Lee was an expert at handling them, that Jongin was doing great and he’d be fine. _Is that what is happening to me?_ Jongin thought as his trembling bled away into bone-weary exhaustion. He felt empty and hopeless. He was exposed, his shame revealed, and he had nowhere left to turn.

But Dr. Lee had held out her hand to him, and Jongin, who in spite of everything, and perhaps because of everything, still secretly, desperately yearned to be loved, had taken it. She took him to her office and asked him, gently and without judgement, what had happened to his arms, and Jongin had told her everything. After that Dr. Lee had taken charge. He had nowhere to go, so she’d brought him home with her, and her husband and daughters had accepted him into their family with hearts as willing and open as Taeyeon’s. She’d guided him through the awfulness of the police statements and the protection order, and gotten him a place in a residency programme at a different hospital through her contacts in the orthopaedic circles. For two years she’d picked him up every time he’d fallen, and gradually his fear and trauma had faded, replaced by the steady support and acceptance of his new family no matter how badly he broke in front of them. The Lees had all but adopted him, and once Jongin learned he was safe with them and loved no matter what, he’d been able to let himself to love them back.

\---

Jongin comes out of his memories with wet eyes and a voice rough from talking. Sohee is still leaning into him, her cheek resting against his arm as she gazes across the lounge. The light has left the sky outside, and the single lamp that had been turned on makes a golden pool of light against the window. Jongin sees them reflected in the glass, Sohee nestled into him with no space between, like they’re two pieces of a puzzle that fit together just right.

They’re quiet now. Sohee doesn’t comment on what he’s told her. She just turns a little further into him, and lets go of his hands so that she can slip her arms around him. She wriggles up a little until their faces are level and gazes softly into his eyes. There are still tears clinging to Jongin’s eyelashes, making her blur into rainbows, but he’s not crying anymore. The chest-crushing anxiety and buzzing-edge panic has all gone, and there’s only him and Sohee, and a heart that feels lighter than it’s ever felt before.

Sohee tips her head forward until their foreheads bump, and their noses press together. They both laugh softly at the closeness of the contact. Sohee brings one hand up to caress his hair, and Jongin closes his eyes. Their lips meet, and the new lightness in his chest expands outward in a rush, flooding his whole body. He clings to her shoulders, and her hand is on his head, around his back, holding him like he’s something precious and wonderful. She rubs her head into the hollow of his throat, and he holds her close to him, presses his lips against her hair.

“I love you,” Sohee whispers. Jongin brings a hand up to her face, and she closes her eyes and pushes her cheek into his palm like one of her big cats. He doesn’t speak aloud in reply, though the words are singing in his chest. Saying those words, turned toxic on him too many times, is still just a little of his reach. But he knows now that with Sohee, there’s no need to voice his feelings aloud. Their hearts speak more deeply than words can.


	23. April 15th

Minseok is nervous, again, palms sweating slightly as he enters the colonial building and walks down the hall to the GreenLine Psychology rooms and his third - well, fourth, if you count last year’s abortive attempt - appointment with Wu Yifan. Minseok doesn’t really count that one though; would rather put it out of his head entirely. He’s ready to do all he can to prove he’s doing his best to Jangmi, but some things are more difficult than others, and the ghost of the flashback haunts him. He rubs his hands on his jeans, a little irritated at himself, before he grabs the door handle. He shouldn’t still be nervous at his third session. He’s not used to it. He’s used to being able to handle anything and everything the ED can throw at him on its most chaotic and crazy weekend nights, multiple traumas and noise and shouting and bright lights and people everywhere, but here, in this quiet old building on a Tuesday morning, surrounded by muted colours and calming decor, he feels like he’s swimming out of his depth, constantly at risk of his head going under.

Yifan has been accommodating so far, telling Minseok on his first session back that he’d rather Minseok kept coming and didn’t drop out of therapy than push him to discuss something he wasn’t ready for yet, even if it ended up taking more time. They’d used the first session just to build rapport and trust between them, and the second to discuss some initial techniques to address the worst effects of his work addiction, but at the end of last week’s session Yifan had mentioned that he’d like to talk more next time about what makes Minseok need to work so much, and Minseok knows that he’s not going to get away with easy sessions much longer. That’s what has his hands sweating today, leaving smudges on the polished gold handle despite his attempts to dry his palms.

On his previous appointments, when Minseok has arrived, the waiting room has been empty except for the receptionist, who, despite her cool demeanour, remembered Minseok’s name without being prompted when he came back several months after his first, failed session. Today, though, when he walks in there are two tall men leaning on the dark wood of the reception bench, both laughing about something, and the receptionist is laughing too, her stern face transformed. Minseok immediately recognizes one of the men as Yifan, sleek and loose-limbed in slim-fit suit pants, white shirt and grey silk waistcoat. The other man is nearly as tall as Yifan and just as handsome, though in a perhaps less intimidating way; his face is open and friendly, brown hair a little messy, wire-framed circular glasses perched on his nose, and he’s dressed just as stylishly as Yifan. Coupled with the rich antique surroundings, Minseok feels like he’s just walked into a men’s fashion photoshoot.

“Minseok,” Yifan notices him enter and turns to him with the boyish grin that takes every scrap of intimidation from his face. “Good to see you. Have you met my partner, Ryu Changwook?”

Minseok recalls the name of the other psychologist from the door plate as the open-faced man smiles and holds out his hand to shake. Minseok quickly rubs his hand on his jeans again before taking Changwook’s with a faintly embarrassed smile. After a few pleasantries are exchanged Changwook disappears into his own office and Yifan beckons Minseok through.

“How are you today?” Yifan asks when they’re seated, adjacent to each other as usual, without the barrier of a desk.

“Fine, thanks,” Minseok replies automatically, then grimaces a little as Yifan just looks at him. He’s learning that his therapy sessions are one place he should try not to hide behind politeness. “A bit nervous, I guess.”

Yifan tilts his head, again saying nothing. Minseok hasn’t worked out yet if this is a therapy technique, to say so little, or if Yifan just isn’t much of a talker. It made him feel awkward at first, he’s not used to filling silence, but he has to remember that these sessions are for his own good, and he has to make an effort. “It’s what you said at the end of our last session, about talking a bit more about why I work so much, rather than just working on mitigating the effects of the work addiction.”

“It made you apprehensive about today’s session?”

“Yeah." Minseok rubs his hands on his jeans again. “I guess that means something, huh?”

Yifan gives him a quick smile. “But you came to the session even though you were apprehensive. That’s a really positive step, Minseok.”

Minseok blinks. Yifan is right. In the past he would have rescheduled himself on a shift to get out of something he didn’t want to do, called to say he couldn’t make it, or even just not turned up without communicating at all. This time, he actually rescheduled himself off a shift to be able to come to therapy.

“I know it's important that I come, even when I don’t want to,” he says. “Even when I’m…” he doesn’t want to say scared. “Nayoung and Eunbi are worth it.”

Yifan nods. Minseok told him this when he came back for his first session, that he needs to keep coming to keep joint custody of his daughters.

“When you came here for the first time last year, we began to talk about the reason for the divorce,” Yifan says. “Do you remember what happened when we tried to talk about that?”

Minseok wishes he didn’t. “Yeah. I was pretty rude, walking out on you like that,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Yifan smiles. “People have done far worse, believe me. But going back to that, between me asking about what happened and you walking out, were you aware that you sat completely still for nearly ten minutes without responding to me saying your name?”

Ten minutes? Minseok bites his lip. “I didn’t realise it was that long.”

“Do you remember what was going through your mind during that time?”

“Yes,” Minseok says. “It was a flashback. I don’t want to think about it, though. I’m worried I’ll go off again.”

“You’re in a safe place,” Yifan says. “You don’t need to be hypervigilant here. If you re-experience - if you have another flashback, nothing bad will happen.”

Minseok realises then that he’s stiff and tense in the chair, his eyes darting around the room, almost as if he’s in the ED at its busiest time and having to be aware of twenty different cases at once. He forces his hands to relax, rolls his neck. It cracks.

“Are you more worried about losing touch with reality, or about what you feel when you re-experience?”

“I don’t know. Both, I guess. I can’t lose touch in my profession. Even a second of inattention could mean disaster for an emergency patient. That’s why I never let myself think about it. After - after that session, that flashback, a couple of weeks after, I got this one patient, and I had another flashback. It was just for a second that time, but it was so powerful, like being hit by a sledgehammer. That hasn’t happened to me for over five years, not even with other patients that are similar. I’m worried that if it happens again, I’ll make a mistake at work.”

“Minseok, are you aware that re-experiencing is one of the most indicative signs of post-traumatic stress disorder?” Yifan asks.

Minseok nods slowly. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I am aware of that. It’s,” he smiles a little ashamedly, his eyes sliding away from Yifan’s. “It’s another thing I don’t really let myself think about.”

“There’s a well-documented paradoxical effect in post-traumatic stress,” Yifan says, “that avoidance and numbing can maintain, or even increase, PTSD symptoms. That’s part of the reason why symptoms can persist for so many years after the traumatic incident. It’s been at least five years, you mentioned?”

“Seven, now,” Minseok says. “The thing that caused it - the divorce, I mean - it was seven years ago.” His hands have clenched again. He flattens them onto his thighs, damp against his jeans. “So you think I have PTSD?” He tries to say it calmly, like the medical professional he is. Like it isn’t making his heart bang hard against his ribs.

“Yes,” Yifan says, “I think it’s very likely you have high-functioning PTSD. The work addiction is your way of coping with the symptoms, which helps you function in day-to-day life. As you’ve discovered, this coping mechanism is affecting your personal and family life, your relationships with your ex-wife and your daughters, and it’s now also causing you extra stress as you worry a flashback will affect you at work. That’s why we need to address the cause of the work addiction, the trauma that’s causing the PTSD symptoms, so that you don’t need the coping mechanism any more.”

“Makes sense,” Minseok says. He tries to smile. It doesn’t quite work. “It’s like how we don’t give analgesia to patients when they come into the ED. We need to monitor their symptoms to find the cause so we can treat it, not just mask it with painkillers. I guess my work addiction is my analgesia.”

“That’s a good analogy,” Yifan says. “How about we try it this way. Could you tell me about the traumatic incident as if you were reporting it as something that happened to someone else? That will give me an idea of what I’m looking at as well as letting you practice talking about it with potentially less emotional involvement. Then, if we get through that okay, I’ll get you to try retelling it as it happened to you, either today or at a future session. How does that sound?”

Minseok nods. “I’ll try. It was a medical case, so I could imagine it as a report I had to make.”

“Tell me as if you were reporting it to a senior staff member, then,” Yifan says.

Minseok talks through the incident. He speaks quickly, tries not to let himself think about what he’s saying or feel it, and the words come out almost robotically. When he’s done, he snaps his mouth shut and presses both hands hard into his eyes.

“What are you feeling?” Yifan asks.

“Nothing.” Minseok watches fireworks explode behind his eyelids.

“Nothing at all?”

Minseok is lying, and he knows Yifan knows. “It’s hard to put into words.”

“What part of what you just told me is the most difficult?”

“All of it,” Minseok says. He stops digging his hands into his eyes and blinks them open, letting the imprints on his retinas fade away. “The whole thing is just awful.”

“What’s the worst of it, though? The worst moment?”

“I guess when I saw Ilsung.”

“Can you explain to me what he looked like when you saw him?”

“He was lying on the floor on his back. The plastic bag was tight over his face. His mouth was open beneath the plastic and it had sucked onto his face as he tried to breathe.”

“What are you feeling right now?”

Minseok shudders. “I feel sick, nauseous. Why didn’t I watch him? Why didn’t I know? I basically killed him.”

“Continue to feel those emotions. Don’t run away from them. Anything else that you’re feeling?”

“Angry at myself, and guilty.”

“Were you feeling angry and guilty at the time?”

“No. I was horrified.”

“Okay, let’s stay with that feeling.”

Minseok’s hands are back against his eyes, grinding in. “I don’t want to feel this any more.”

“I know you don’t. You’re doing a great job of not avoiding your feelings here. Let them run their course. They’ll decrease if you stay with them.”

Minseok does as he’s told. It’s horrible, but he keeps the feeling with him, and after a period of time that seems endless, it does eventually begin to fade a little, become less extreme and all-encompassing. After a while Yifan speaks again, asking him to talk about the divorce, and it’s such a relief to think about something else that Minseok finds it easy to explain, and they discuss it until the session is nearly over.

“What you did today was one of the hardest steps of your therapy,” Yifan tells him. “You did really well getting through that. We’ll still need to work some more on it, but it will get easier from here.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Minseok says wearily, and Yifan grins. He walks Minseok out to the waiting room this time, going over to the water cooler and filling him a plastic cup, handing it to him without comment. Minseok drinks the cold water and it’s more refreshing than he’d expected. Just as he’s about to leave his phone rings. It’s the ED wanting a consult on a trauma case, and Minseok idly watches Yifan leave the waiting room as he tells the resident he’ll be back in twenty minutes. Instead of going into his own office, Yifan enters Changwook’s office, closing the door behind him.

On the way back to the hospital, the music station Minseok is listening to interrupts a song half-way through to issue an emergency bulletin. There’s been a shooting in another part of the city with multiple reported casualties, and the announcer relays the police cordon locations and asks civilians in the area to stay indoors until further notice. Minseok listens tensely until he hears that it’s nowhere near Nayoung and Eunbi’s school or Jangmi’s workplace. There are several closer hospitals than Hangang, so he doubts his ED will see any of the victims, but if the other hospitals are swamped, other patients may be redirected to his hospital. He needs to get back and make sure everything’s running well.

He shrugs quickly back into his white coat in his office and heads to the nursing station to discuss the situation with the head nurse. As he’d thought, none of the shooting victims are being sent to Hangang, but Aecha tells him that the smaller of the two hospitals is redirecting non-urgent patients to them, and within half an hour they’re close to capacity. Minseok sinks into the bustle and the next few hours fly by. This is the way he likes it, busy enough that he can’t think of anything else, though he’d never wish it to happen because of something so terrible as a shooting.

He finishes reducing a shoulder dislocation with little trouble and is going back to grab the next chart when Aecha catches him on his way past the nursing station.

“You’ve been on the go for four hours, Dr. Kim,” she says cheerfully. “Time for a break.” Minseok holds back a sigh and nods.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll take fifteen.” One of the things Yifan had suggested in an earlier session was to ask his staff to remind him to take regular breaks and to finish his shifts on time. Minseok asked his head nurse to do this, and Aecha has taken the request to heart. Minseok appreciates her diligence, he supposes, even though he hates to break the flow. He glances at his watch and finds that it’s half past five already. Did he eat lunch? No, he remembers, he got distracted by checking on the shooting, so he heads towards the cafeteria with the aim of grabbing a quick sandwich. He won’t be finished till eleven tonight and it’s only going to get busier in the evening. He might not get another chance to eat.

He probably shouldn’t have allowed himself to glance into the waiting room as he passed. It was an automatic habit, but when he does, thoughts of his sandwich are immediately driven from his mind, because he recognises the two people standing at the reception. Or, one of them is standing, peering through wire-framed glasses as he fills in the registration paperwork. The other is more draped, leaning floppily on the reception desk as he holds a bloody towel to his forehead, face grey. Minseok pauses for a split second as the unexpectedness of seeing Yifan and his colleague here in the ED makes him doubt his eyes, but there’s no mistaking them. It would seem Yifan has had an accident. Minseok starts to walk over, but he’s only taken a few steps when the triage nurse reaches for the towel and takes it from Yifan’s head, probably wanting to check the head wound beneath it. Yifan’s eyes go to the blood-stained towel in her hand, then roll back into his head, legs giving way as he collapses. Minseok lunges for him at the same time as Changwook and the triage nurse, and between them they manage to catch him before he hits the floor.

“There he goes again,” Changwook says, rather long-sufferingly, both arms wrapped around Yifan’s torso. Minseok glances up at Aecha as she tells him trauma bay 3 is free, and between them he and Changwook carry Yifan over and get him onto the bed, where Minseok starts to check his vital signs. Changwook is hovering on the other side of the bed. Minseok notices there’s a bloodstain on the shoulder and sleeve of his expensive shirt. “Are you hurt?”

Changwook looks confused, then follows Minseok’s eyes to glance at the stain. “Oh, no, that’s Yifan’s blood. He dripped on me when I was carrying him to the car.”

“What happened?”

“He cut his finger in the kitchen and passed out when he saw the blood. Went down like a stone,” Changwook says. “I was across the room and couldn’t catch him in time, and he hit the counter on the way down. Took a pretty good chunk out of his forehead.”

Minseok remembers Kyungsoo telling him about this tendency of Yifan’s. No wonder the poor guy had switched from medicine to psychology. He leans forward to examine the gash at Yifan’s hairline, which has started to bleed again on removal of the towel. It’s a couple of inches long and has gone right down to the bone. It needs stitches. He presses the gauze pad a nurse hands him over the cut and tapes it down as a temporary measure. “How long was he unconscious?”

“Around six, seven minutes, I’d say. I thought he’d knocked himself out, because the other times he’s done this he always woke up in under a minute.” He shakes his head at the unconscious man on the bed. His face displays more worry than is evident in his voice. “He’s going to be so embarrassed when he realises he passed out again.”

“Well, passing out in the waiting room is a pretty good way of getting yourself to the top of the list,” Minseok tells him with a slight smile. From what he’s heard and witnessed, he’s pretty sure Yifan fainted again on seeing the blood on the towel rather than due to any worsening brain injury, but being out for six minutes is longer than normal for vasovagal syncope, so he decides to get a CT head just in case. He’s about to make the call when Yifan blinks his eyes open and stares up at the ceiling.

“Welcome back,” Minseok says, smiling a little.

Yifan’s eyes land on Minseok and focus. Then he shuts his eyes again and says, “Fuck.”

“Yifan,” Changwook scolds, suppressed laughter in his voice. “Be nice.”

Minseok can’t help grinning at the reaction. He takes out his torch to check his pupils. “Yifan, do you know where you are?”

“Considering you’re here, Hangang emergency department,” Yifan says. His voice is weak and a little slurred. He rolls his head to look at Changwook pitifully. “Why’d you have to bring me to Hangang? This is so humiliating.” There’s almost a whine in his tone.

“Do you remember what happened, Yifan?” Minseok asks.

“One moment I was chopping vegetables and the next I was on the kitchen floor with this clown kneeling over me,” Yifan says, gesturing vaguely at Changwook. His voice is getting stronger. “I assume I managed to see something when I got here and went down again.” He sighs. “You should just blindfold me while I’m here.”

“How do you feel at the moment?”

“Sick. Shaky. It’ll pass with the vasovagal response,” Yifan says. “I know how this works. Fix my head up and I’ll get out of your hair and let you deal with some real patients.”

“I’m going to send you to radiology for a CT scan,” Minseok tells him. “According to Changwook you were unconscious for six minutes, and I’d like to rule out any brain injury.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Yifan starts to protest, but Minseok just smiles at him.

“This is my ED, you’re the patient now,” he says. “Besides, I can’t let Kyungsoo up in radiology miss out on the opportunity of looking after you.”

Yifan groans loudly, covering his face with one hand. “Spare me,” he mumbles. Changwook takes the hand from his face and interlaces their fingers, and Yifan looks at him for a few moments. They don’t say anything, but something in their locked gazes suddenly makes Minseok feel like he’s intruding on something private.

“Do as the doctor says,” Changwook says gently, and Minseok busies himself calling radiology to get the CT scan.

When Yifan gets back from radiology, CT scan clear, it’s with a small, dark-eyed radiologist pushing his wheelchair. Kyungsoo’s face is impassive as usual as he deposits Yifan in an examination room to get stitched up. He leans against the wall, arms folded, and watches Minseok irrigate Yifan’s wound and prepare a suture kit without speaking. Minseok would usually give simple suturing jobs like this to a junior resident or one of his specialist trauma nurses, but Yifan is his psychologist and Kyungsoo’s friend, and he wants to do the job himself.

“You going to hang out here?” he asks Kyungsoo.

“My shift is over. I thought I’d come and enjoy the show,” Kyungsoo says, raising an amused eyebrow at Yifan, who scowls at him.

“You doctor types are so weird. How is watching my head get sewn back together enjoyable?”

“That’s not the part I’m here for,” Kyungsoo tells him, deadpan. “I want to watch you squirm.”

“You suck,” Yifan grumbles. “Where’s Changwook? I only want friends who are nice to me.”

“You might want to close your eyes,” Minseok tells Yifan as he readies the toothed forceps and suturing scissors. “It’d be preferable if you didn’t lose consciousness again.”

“I’ll only black out if I actually see blood,” Yifan says, but closes his eyes anyway.

“His friend is in the waiting room. His name is Ryu Changwook,” Minseok tells Kyungsoo as he starts to suture, and Kyungsoo disappears, returning a minute later with the tall psychologist in tow. Changwook comes over and sits on the chair beside the bed, taking one of Yifan’s hands again. Kyungsoo stands over Minseok’s shoulder and offers “helpful” comments on Minseok’s suturing, mostly along the lines of “no, Minseok, don’t put that there - oh well, too late now” and “well that's torn it, now we’ll have to amputate, but you can manage without your head, right Yifan?” Minseok snickers to himself, enjoying the banter, and Yifan’s face, which had gone ashen again despite his words when Minseok approached with the suture kit, regains a little colour as he’s distracted by shooting back retorts. He dresses the closed wound, then cleans the blood from where it’s dried down Yifan’s face and neck, making sure he gets every bit of it. The last thing they need is him going down a third time.

“Okay, we’re all done,” he tells him, and Yifan opens his eyes and thanks him.

“Do you want to grab dinner?” Kyungsoo asks. “The cafeteria here isn’t too bad.” Changwook and Yifan agree, and Kyungsoo turns to Minseok. “You too,” he says, shaking his head when Minseok opens his mouth to protest that he doesn’t have time now that the evening rush has begun. “You have that hypoglycaemic look again.”

“It was too busy with the redirected patients from the shooting to eat lunch,” Minseok explains, then shoots a guilty look at Yifan. Yifan doesn’t say anything, though, which Minseok is grateful for. He appreciates the other man keeping his therapy to the therapy sessions, but it makes him aware again of how ingrained this kind of habit is. He forces himself to ignore the urge to check in with the nursing station on his way through and leads the small group from the ED and across the entrance hall to the cafeteria. Over dinner Yifan and Kyungsoo continue to shoot insults at each other, and Minseok and Changwook are reduced to helpless laughter at their seemingly endless banter. Minseok is glad to see Kyungsoo so comfortable in company. Usually he’s almost completely silent with any more than two people around. It’s refreshing to hang out with new people too, and he could see himself becoming friends with Yifan and Changwook.

Yifan doesn’t eat much, likely still feeling the effects of the vasovagal syncope, and when Changwook has finished eating he excuses them, saying he needs to take Yifan home to bed. Minseok waves as they leave, and he’s left with Kyungsoo sitting next to him, the radiologist slowly chewing the japchae it’s taken him at least twice as long to eat as it took Minseok to eat his.

“Are Yifan and Changwook together?” Minseok asks Kyungsoo curiously. He wouldn’t have even thought about it a couple of weeks ago, but finding out Chanyeol had a boyfriend at the flat party has brought the awareness of homosexual relationships closer to the surface of his mind, and the hand-holding, the lingering gaze, was just a little more than Minseok would expect from friendship. He assumes Kyungsoo would know, being Yifan’s friend, so he’s surprised when Kyungsoo nearly chokes on his mouthful.

“I don’t think so,” Kyungsoo says when he’s finished coughing. “Why would you think that?”

“Just curious,” Minseok shrugs. “I found out a friend of mine is gay recently and it’s been making me think about the state of sexual and gender diversity in our country. My friend had been hiding his sexaulity since he was a teenager.”

“I never really think about it,” Kyungsoo says. “But you’re right. It’s not just sexual diversity either, there’s so much societal pressure to fit a certain mold. Marry and have kids by thirty, or you’re a failure.”

“Are your parents still pressuring you about that?" Minseok asks.

“Just my mom, really. She told me last time I went over for dinner that people will start to think there’s something wrong with me if I can’t find a girlfriend soon.”

Minseok frowns. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says. Kyungsoo stares into the remnants of his japchae.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think there is.”

“Kyungsoo, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get married,” Minseok says. “Just like there’s nothing wrong with my friend being gay. We’re people. We don’t have to fit into tidy boxes.”

Kyungsoo pushes his bowl away. “Yeah, I know. But even the idea of having a girlfriend - or a boyfriend, if it comes to that - just makes me want to go hide under my bed and never come out.” He laughs, but it sounds sad. “I don’t really think that’s normal.”

They’re quiet for a while, and then Minseok says, “you know, it’s been six years since I split up with Jangmi. It’s probably not normal that I’ve never been interested in another woman since her either. But that doesn't mean I have to push myself just for the sake of what my family would like, or what looks right in society.” He smiles. “Anyway, being normal is overrated. It’s way cooler to be individual and unique!”

Kyungsoo snorts. “Next you’ll be telling me I should dye my hair in rainbow colours, like that intern had back then.”

“But you’d look so fabulous,” Minseok gasps, hands going to his cheeks, and Kyungsoo starts to laugh, the air lightening between them.

He has to get back to the ED, and Kyungsoo gets up to go home, saying he wants to take advantage of Yifan’s probable inability to game tonight and level up in something or other they’re playing against each other online. Minseok never games and hasn’t got a clue what Kyungsoo is talking about. He watches his friend walk out of the front entrance, hands shoved deep into his pockets, before turning to go back to the ED and the rest of his shift.

### \---

Chanyeol is happy. For the first time in a very long time, life feels like it’s going exactly how he wants it to. Baekhyun is slowly returning to the person he was before Nari broke up with him and they have started discussing getting him back to work. Yeonseok smiles more often now that Chanyeol has finally let go of his fear and his smiles are worth everything. He is no longer drowning in a façade, and though he has decided not to tell his colleagues that he’s gay unless the subject comes up specifically, just having made the decision to be himself makes him feel like nothing the world can throw at him can get to him. There’s a spring to his steps and even the sickest children can’t get his spirits down.

“…and then Eunhye wanted to trade but it was a really unfair deal because she got my really good Articuno and I only got Aerodactyl but she didn’t want to trade back so I went to Mrs. Jeon and I finally got her to trade back but I’m never trading with her again!”

Chanyeol gasps, both hands to his cheeks in horror, and Baek Kisung giggles. He's been proving the fact that his difficulty breathing has completely resolved by talking Chanyeol’s ear off about Pokémon for the last couple of minutes, undaunted by the fact that an oxygen mask is covering his face.

“That’s super unfair,” Chanyeol says. “I’m glad you got your Articuno back.” In all honesty Chanyeol wouldn’t know an Articuno if it jumped up and bit him on the nose, but Kisung has already given him enough of an education unprompted, he’s not about to admit his ignorance and risk a lecture from a 5-year-old Pokémon expert.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. “Is it easier to get your breath?” Kisung nods distractedly and proceeds to prove it by launching into a speech about which Pokémon he wants to capture next. His father, sitting on a chair next to Kisung’s bed, sends Chanyeol a grimace of apology. He’s dressed in worn jeans and a dirty shirt and his skin is tanned and rugged in the way of outdoor workers. Kisung was transferred to Hangang University Hospital yesterday night from a rural clinic up near the DMZ with carbon monoxide poisoning, as the city hospital’s expertise and facilities might be needed should long-term effects of the carbon monoxide poisoning show up.

“You’re still feeling alright?” Chanyeol asks Mr. Baek. “No headache, dizziness, shortness of breath at all?”

“Look, I’ve already told you, I’m completely fine. Just look after Kisung, okay?” Mr. Baek says irritably. Chanyeol supposes this is fair enough, since it’s at least the fifth time Chanyeol has asked him this, and the emergency department staff before him have been on his case too. Kisung was exposed to the gas at home from an old heating system, so his father must have been exposed too, but neither Chanyeol, nor any of the other doctors or nurses, have been able to convince him to get so much as a routine blood screen.

“Well, Kisung,” he says, breaking into the boy’s monologue on all the different attacks his Pokémon know, “I think we’ll just get one more blood test, and then you’ll be able to go home!” He smiles brightly, as if getting a blood test is just about the most exciting thing to happen all day. Kisung, however, isn’t convinced. He reaches out towards his father.

“I don’t want another blood test,” he whines as his father cuddles him, but Chanyeol isn’t deterred. This is not an unusual occurrence. He nods the phlebotomist into the room and Kisung crawls closer to his father.

“Dasom is really good at this,” Chanyeol promises as the phlebotomist sets up. He reaches out towards Kisung and the boy allows him to take his hand. He stares at the tiny needle that is used for kids until Chanyeol clicks his tongue and gains his attention. “Yesterday you told me you were looking for a Ditto, right? Did you find it?”

Kisung shakes his head and launches into a rant about how elusive the Pokémon is. He’s still going when Dasom is finished taking the sample and starting to pack up. Chanyeol reaches into his pocket for his sticker book and peels one out. Kisung is so into his monologue that it takes him a couple of moments to even notice the gold star Chanyeol is waving enticingly in front of him. He breaks off and his eyes widen as he focuses on the sticker.

“Look, daddy, I got another gold star!” he squeals, and the man takes the sticker from Chanyeol and gently sticks it on Kisung’s forehead. Kisung laughs, and Chanyeol gets up from the bed so he can follow Dasom out into the hallway.

“When can I expect a result?” he asks.

“I have another patient on the eighth floor first, so about an hour?”

Chanyeol nods. That’s okay. He can wait an hour. The levels of carbon monoxide in Kisung’s blood will be getting lower along with the disappearance of his symptoms, but he needs to make sure they get below 10% so he can discharge him. Dasom rolls her cart towards the elevators and Chanyeol is distracted by Nurse Yun approaching him.

“Mrs. Yeo has a question, when you have time, Dr. Park,” he says. Chanyeol nods and turns, but he’s only taken a single step when a dull thump sounds from Kisung’s room, followed by a child’s panicked scream. Chanyeol spins around and runs back into the room, Nurse Yun right on his heels. Mr. Baek is lying on the floor beside the bed, unconscious.

“Look after Kisung,” Chanyeol instructs Nurse Yun as he drops to his knees beside Mr. Baek. He’s peripherally aware of the nurse pulling Kisung close to calm him as he puts two fingers on Mr. Baek’s carotid artery. His pulse is racing. Chanyeol grabs the stethoscope from around his neck. The respiration is raspy and shallow, and Chanyeol guesses the man has been hiding his symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning all along. He can’t diagnose it though, not without the tests the man refused; the main thing is to get Mr. Baek stable, and Chanyeol needs help to do that.

Nurse Lee has joined them in the room and is attempting to gain IV access. Chanyeol kneels up and reaches for his pager to call someone from the ED, but when he tries, the small screen reads ERR. He tries again, but gets the same error message. Great, of course his pager would decide to give up the ghost right when Chanyeol needs it most.

“My pager’s not working,” he tells Nurse Lee, who is still trying to find a vein. “Can you call the ED? Or no, wait, I’ll do it.” He gets up to go for the wall phone, leaving her to finish placing the IV. It’s not like he could do that any better than her, the nurses do it far more often than he does. He dials the switchboard and asks for an adult emergency team, only to be told that the ED is completely swamped.

“We’ll send you an intensivist,” the switchboard operator tells him, and Chanyeol has no choice but to agree. If it is carbon monoxide poisoning as he suspects, Mr. Baek is probably going to end up in the ICU anyway. Bypassing the ED might actually be more ideal.

He hangs up and turns back to find Mr. Baek returning to consciousness, and the situation rapidly becomes chaotic. The man is extremely confused, shouting nonsense and trying to fight Nurse Lee off. Kisung is screaming for his father and nothing Nurse Yun says calms him. Chanyeol ignores the ear-splitting noise as all the things he needs to do before the intensivist arrives flash through his mind. They need to move Mr. Baek to a bed and if his respiration doesn’t get better soon, Chanyeol will have to intubate him. He would really rather not do that. It has been years since Chanyeol last intubated an adult and he only does it on very rare occasions on children. The man swats at Nurse Lee and it’s only due to her sharp reflexes that he misses. Chanyeol grabs his arm and holds it still.

“Don’t move, Mr. Baek,” he says firmly, but the man just gets more aggravated when another needle pricks his skin. The volume in the room dials up yet another level as he starts swearing and cursing at everyone in sight.

“Take Kisung out!” Chanyeol calls over the noise. Nurse Yun nods and carries Kisung towards the door, gripping the writhing child tightly in his arms. The boy shrieks even louder at being taken away from his father, and Chanyeol has his work cut out to restrain Mr. Baek as he matches his son’s volume in angry yells.

“What’s going on?”

Chanyeol glances over and gets a brief impression of a woman in a white coat framed in the doorway. He assumes this will be the intensivist the switchboard operator sent up. He can’t let go of Mr. Baek, worried that he’ll hurt Nurse Lee if he stops holding him down, but the new doctor takes in the situation with a glance and walks over to crouch down opposite him. She catches Mr. Baek’s other arm in a strong grip, and Chanyeol looks into a soft face with round cheeks and wide eyes framed in black tufts of hair that seems to have escaped her bun.

“I’m Dr. Lee Eunsook, from the ICU,” she says loudly, having to project over the yelling despite the fact they’re basically face-to-face over the patient.

“Park Chanyeol,” Chanyeol says quickly. “This is Mr. Baek. His 5-year-old son was admitted with carbon monoxide poisoning last night, but Mr. Baek refused blood screening and denied all symptoms until he collapsed a couple of minutes ago. My best guess is he was poisoned as well. He’s definitely altered mentally and he’s getting tachycardic.”

Dr. Lee nods and begins an examination. Thankfully Mr. Baek is starting to calm down a little, and together they manage to get him off the floor and onto the chair again. Dr. Lee asks the nurse to find a saline bag and call an orderly for transport, and everything starts to go smoothly even though they’ve never worked together before. Dr. Lee talks soothingly to Mr. Baek and manages to convince him to keep the oxygen mask on his nose and mouth, but Chanyeol suspects standard oxygen treatment like his son won’t cut it, and his thoughts are confirmed a few moments later when Dr. Lee tells him that she’s going to admit him to the ICU for hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Within minutes Dr. Lee and the orderly have disappeared with Mr. Baek, and Chanyeol and Nurse Lee are left in a room that suddenly seems ringingly silent in the aftermath of all the yelling and screaming.

“Well, that was exciting,” Nurse Lee says dryly, and Chanyeol has to laugh even as he rubs his head, the beginnings of a headache starting behind his temples.

In the nursing lounge he finds Kisung sitting on the sofa next to Nurse Yun, who is reading him a storybook. The little boy has calmed down considerably, though his face is still red and tear-streaked, and he’s clutching one of the ward stuffed toys Nurse Yun has found.

“Hey, brave Pokémon trainer?” Chanyeol crouches down in front of the couch to get on Kisung’s level. “Remember how you felt sick when daddy brought you to the hospital?” Kisung nods. “Daddy feels sick like that too now, so he had to go to the adult ward. The doctors there are going to make him feel better.”

Kisung stares at him without blinking for what seems like an eternity.

“I need to hug daddy because he’s sick,” he says eventually, and Chanyeol smiles.

“He might be feeling too sick for hugs at the moment, but we can go to visit him and wave at him. Would you like that?” he asks. A hug won’t be possible until Mr. Baek is out of the hyperbaric chamber, but that doesn’t mean Kisung shouldn’t know what’s going on with his father. Kisung nods, so Chanyeol tells him he’ll come and pick him up when he’s talked to the intensivist, and Nurse Yun holds out his hand to lead Kisung back to his room.

Chanyeol gets distracted by a patient with croup and thirty minutes pass before he gets a quiet moment to call the ICU. He avoids catching the receptionist’s eye and shuts the door to his office behind him. The quiet that follows has him closing his eyes just for a second. It’s barely two in the afternoon and so much has happened already, and the headache that started during the noisy episode has settled to a dull ache between his temples. He still has a good three hours to go, though, no matter how inviting the couch in his office is looking right now, so he rubs his head and dials the ICU to get permission to bring Kisung down for a visit.

An hour after Mr. Baek was admitted to the ICU, Chanyeol holds Kisung’s hand and walks him to the elevator, lifting him up so he can press the button for level two. Kisung has mostly recovered from his scare, and Chanyeol starts to prepare him for what he’s going to see, because a hyperbaric chamber can look scary to an adult, let alone a kid.

“Daddy needs oxygen, like you were getting from the mask,” he says, “but he needs more than you did, so he’s lying in a special glass box that’s full of oxygen. You’ll be able to see him and wave to him, but he can’t come out of the box until he’s feeling better.” Kisung doesn’t say anything to this, and Chanyeol knows the abstract idea is probably too difficult for him to understand. It’ll be easier to explain when he can see the chamber for himself.

They arrive to curious glances and smiles from the ICU nurses, and Chanyeol hoists Kisung into his arms and carries him towards the room his father is in. Kisung stares at the coffin-like hyperbaric chamber, where Mr. Baek can be seen through the glass sides.

“Why is daddy in there?”

“Remember what I told you in the elevator? The box is making daddy feel better, like the oxygen mask made you feel better.”

Kisung stares at him with huge eyes, and Chanyeol sees his lip begin to tremble. He doesn’t really understand, and the last thing Chanyeol wants is another screaming episode, especially not in the ICU. He racks his brains for a way to explain that will engage Kisung.

“Is there a Pokémon that makes bad gases?” he tries. He can barely remember the few episodes of the anime he watched as a teenager, he was far more into Naruto, but it’s obviously the right subject, because Kisung’s face lights up.

“Weezing has poison gas attack!” he exclaims. “It poisons other Pokémon and people too!” Chanyeol has to bite back a laugh at the appropriateness of the Pokémon’s name.

“Right,” he says. “So it’s like Weezing’s poison gas attack made you and daddy sick and need to come to the hospital. The doctors use the mask you were wearing and this box to fight the poison gas.”

Kisung looks back to his father in the hyperbaric chamber.

“We got Weezing’s poison gas?”

“Yeah, and daddy got so much, a little mask like yours just wasn't enough. So Dr. Lee filled up that glass box with good gas and that’s going to fight all Weezing’s poison gas away. Then daddy will be able to come out and give you a hug.” Chanyeol holds his breath as Kisung absorbs this information.

“Dr. Lee must be a Pokémon Master,” he says, sounding rather awed, and Chanyeol can’t help laughing, which makes Kisung giggle too.

“Yeah, she’s a great Pokémon Master and she defeated Weezing’s poison gas attack,” he says, and Kisung squirms in his arms with excitement.

“I want to go see her!”

“Okay,” Chanyeol puts Kisung down and takes his hand. “Let’s see if we can find her.”

Lee Eunsook is at the computer desk near the rooms so she can keep an eye on every patient should they suddenly turn for the worse. She smiles welcomingly when they approach, Kisung practically dragging Chanyeol down the hall towards her, and her smile only deepens when Kisung calls her a Pokémon Master. He produces a tiny plastic figurine of a Pikachu he’s been carrying in his pocket, declaring it a gift for her because she saved his father from the bad Weezing, and Eunsook accepts the little toy readily. She’s good with kids, Chanyeol notes, as she places Pikachu on the computer desk and ruffles Kisung’s hair, assuring him that his daddy will soon be feeling better. Chanyeol takes Kisung’s hand again to take him back up to paediatrics and Eunsook waves goodbye, still smiling.

The receptionist, Yowon, catches his eye as they enter the paediatric ward. “Dr. Park, do you have a moment? I might have to adjust the hours of your next outpatient clinic,” she says, so after Chanyeol has settled Kisung in his room again he heads back towards reception to sort it out. He’s about to step behind the tall counter to look at the computer screen over Yowon’s shoulder when something on the wall TV in the outpatient waiting area catches his eye. The sound is turned right down, but a yellow BREAKING NEWS band is scrolling across the bottom of the screen, and the footage shows police cars with their lights flashing and army vehicles pulled up to block off what looks like a university campus. The shot changes to one of police officers guarding a cordon, then to crying people clinging to each other as they’re escorted away by the army, then to paramedics treating people with bloodstained clothes, ambulances pulled up all around.

Chanyeol focuses on the text crawling across the bottom of the screen. There’s been a shooting at one of the university campuses in Hongdae, on the other side of the river. There are already seven people confirmed dead and at least fourteen wounded, and the number is expected to rise as more information filters through to the media.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Yowon behind the desk has followed his gaze. Chanyeol nods. He can hardly believe such an awful thing could happen in his country, his city, and he hopes Yeonseok hasn’t been deployed to the area. Hongdae is out of his jurisdiction, but they’ll likely be pulling officers from other areas for this. He wants to call Yeonseok and make sure he’s okay, but he knows his boyfriend won’t be able to pick up while he’s on duty, especially not if he’s on this case. He’s about to turn away from the screen when the scrolling text changes again. One police officer killed, three wounded in pursuit of the shooter.

Chanyeol feels the blood drain from his face, everything going dim and distant as the TV screen seems to loom in his vision. He reaches out clumsily to steady himself on the reception desk as the footage replays.

“...Dr. Park? Dr. Park!” There’s a hand on his arm, and he drags his head around to look around and down at Yowon. It feels like he’s moving his body from very far away. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m...I…” Chanyeol can’t make the sentence form. He looks back at the screen, reads the scrolling text again. Seven civilians dead, fourteen wounded, one police officer dead in pursuit, three injured. Yowon looks from him, to the screen, to him again, and her eyes widen as she makes the connection.

“Do you know someone in the area?”

“I - I think - maybe -” he puts a hand to his head, trying to get a grip on himself. It won’t be Yeonseok. It can’t be. There are so many police officers in Seoul, the chances are so small, but shock and fear won’t listen to reason. Yowon grabs his arm and pulls him towards his office.

“Can you call them?” she asks, pushing him into his chair. “Or do you want me to call someone for you?”

“No. Don’t. I’ll. I’ll see if I can contact him.” His words are coming in jerks. He fumbles for his phone, barely even acknowledging Yowon saying she’ll keep anyone from disturbing him for the next few minutes. Calling Yeonseok is almost certainly pointless, but he has to at least try. Yeonseok’s contact picture smiles up at him as the phone rings, but as he’d both expected and feared, it goes through to voicemail.

He tries to take a calming breath, but it doesn’t touch the fear crawling all over him. “He’ll be fine,” he tells himself aloud, but the words ring hollow in his empty office. He can’t believe them without knowing. He has to confirm, somehow, that Yeonseok is okay. They’d call him, wouldn’t they, if anything had happened? They’d contact his next of kin - and then Chanyeol remembers he’s not Yeonseok’s next of kin, and nearly chokes. He stopped his boyfriend from putting his name down on the form, told him to put his parents down instead because of his own stupid fear of being exposed, and now they won’t know to call him, Chanyeol won’t know to go to him if, if…

He shakes his head hard, tries to shake that thought right out of it. He can check the emergency department himself. He stands up and heads down to the ED, trying desperately to hold onto the shreds of his composure. He mustn’t panic. There’s no need to panic.

In the ED he’s met with chaos, and usually he copes with ED chaos just fine, but today it all just swirls around him dizzyingly, and he feels disoriented, nauseated as his eyes track hurrying people in all directions. He pushes his way to the nursing station and catches a nurse by the elbow before she can leave it unattended.

“The shooting,” he says, “the victims, are they -” but the nurse is already shaking her head.

“They were all sent to Yonsei Hospital,” she says. “This mess is because they’re redirecting their other patients here.” She pulls away from Chanyeol and vanishes into the bustle. Chanyeol feels dizzy again, and he has to lean on the nursing station and hang his head and force himself to breathe. “Stop,” he tells himself under his breath. “Just stop. You don’t know anything yet.”

He grits his teeth as he heads back towards the elevator. It’s like Baekhyun all over again, only even worse, because it’s Yeonseok, and Chanyeol can’t do anything, he can’t rush out and save Yeonseok the way he could for Baekhyun. He feels sick with fear and totally helpless as he makes his way back to his office, just shaking his head at Yowon’s worried inquiry. He collapses into his desk chair and speed dials Yeonseok again, but there’s still no response. He taps out a fumbling message, his fingers too clumsy on the screen. Are you safe? Please let me know when you can.

His door opens and Chanyeol looks up. It’s Jongdae, forehead creased and eyes tight with worry as he hurries across the office to Chanyeol. “I saw the news,” he says. “Is Yeonseok okay?”

“I don’t know.” Chanyeol’s voice cracks a little. “He’s not picking up his phone. He’s on duty, so...so I’m sure he’s just...busy....with it all…” he gestures vaguely, aware that he sounds like he’s about to fall apart, but unable to help it. Jongdae bites his lip and reaches out to grip Chanyeol’s shoulder, but before he can say anything Chanyeol’s phone rings. He snatches it up and stares at the screen. It’s Yeonseok’s brother. He stabs at the button and presses the phone to his ear.

“Have you heard?” he asks. His voice sounds hoarse. “Is he…”

“We talked to the police,” Yeonseok’s brother says on the other end. “They say he’s not one of the confirmed injured or dead.”

“So he’s not hurt? He’s okay?”

“I haven’t been able to talk to him directly,” Yeonseok’s brother says, “but he’s not on the injured lists, so yeah, he’s okay.”

“He’s okay,” Chanyeol repeats numbly, and Jongdae’s murmured “thank God” sounds very far away. All the reaction crashes over Chanyeol then, a tsunami of it, the terror that he might have lost Yeonseok and the relief that he hasn’t, and he puts his head down on his desk and sobs.

“Chanyeol, he’s okay,” Jongdae grabs his shoulders and pulls him up, hugs him tightly. “He’s okay. He’s fine,” he repeats, and Chanyeol nods, hiding his face in his friend’s shoulder, shuddering as he tries to get a grip.

“Sorry,” he chokes out. “It’s just the reaction...”

“I know,” Jongdae says. He sounds so calm, and he doesn’t let go of Chanyeol even a little. Chanyeol closes his eyes, so grateful to have a friend like Jongdae, who knows what he needs, who’ll let him cry all over him like a baby without an ounce of judgement. When he’s managed to control himself a little, he pulls back and sniffs loudly, dragging his sleeve over his wet face. Jongdae laughs and shoves the tissue box on Chanyeol’s desk towards him.

“Don’t be gross,” he says, the compassion in his voice softening the words. “When does your shift end?”

“Five,” Chanyeol says, tears still leaking a little.

“Hang tight,” Jongdae says. Chanyeol dabs at his eyes with the tissues until Jongdae reappears and tells him the paediatric staff will cope without him for this last hour. Chanyeol closes his eyes briefly, almost overwhelmed with relief and gratitude. Now he can go home and wait for Yeonseok. Even though he’s heard he’s okay, he knows he won’t be able to fully believe it until his boyfriend is safe in his arms.

“Thank you,” he tells his friend sincerely. Jongdae just smiles at him, and walks all the way down to the basement carpark with him before he has to disappear back into the hospital.

Chanyeol drives home in a blur of emotional exhaustion. When he opens the door to their apartment, it’s to absolute silence. No sound of the TV or music player, no kitchen noises or shower sounds. Yeonseok isn’t back. Chanyeol’s mind tries to twist the information he’s been given, tries to whisper fear through him, and he shakes his head yet again, head stabbing with pain at the harsh movement.

Inside, he finds Baekhyun sitting on the floor in front of the muted TV, hugging his knees to his chest as he stares fixedly at the silently repeating tragedy. There are dried tear tracks down his face. He looks so fragile, curled up like that, all bones and tears like a lost child, and guilt punches a hole in Chanyeol’s stomach. It never even occurred to him that Baekhyun might have seen the news too, and he’s been alone all afternoon with nothing to do but worry. Chanyeol feels terrible. He should have called.

“Baekhyun,” he says. Baekhyun’s tear-stained face turns to him. Before Chanyeol can say anything else, Baekhyun scrambles to his feet and rushes over to press himself against him, fists curling into Chanyeol’s shirt. Chaneyol puts his arms around him. He can feel Baekhyun’s breathing against his chest.

“Yeonseok?” Baekhyun's voice is a ragged whisper.

“They said he’s not hurt,” Chanyeol manages, and feels Baekhyun’s gasp of relief as his fingers curl even tighter into his shirt, but Chanyeol can’t feel the meaning of the words, can’t believe himself any more. He can’t truly believe Yeonseok is safe until he sees him with his own eyes.

Baekhyun doesn’t say anything more, just presses his face into Chanyeol’s chest and keeps on clinging. After a while Baekhyun pulls away enough to lead Chanyeol over to the couch, pausing on the way to change the channel on the TV, replacing the repeated horror story with a cooking show. He pushes Chanyeol gently down onto the cushions and then curls up against him, whispering assurances that Yeonseok is okay and will surely be home soon, brushing Chanyeol’s renewed tears away from his face with his thin fingers. At first it feels strange to be the one taken care of. His best friend who almost died a few months ago is back, looking out for him the way he always used to do, and Chanyeol finds that it doesn’t matter that he’s supposed to be the stronger of the two right now, supposed to be the support pillar that Baekhyun can lean on. All they can do is take comfort in each other and wait.

By the time the apartment door opens again half an hour later, the tears have dried and breathing isn’t hard anymore. Baekhyun’s head lifts off Chanyeol’s arm, and Chanyeol’s heart stutters in his chest at the sound of Yeonseok’s voice.

“I’m home.” It’s the same call as always, but there’s a subtle difference in his tone, and Chanyeol knows, just from hearing those two words, that Yeonseok has been through hell today.

They unfurl themselves in seconds and it is Chanyeol who reaches the hallway first. He stops and stares at his boyfriend, barely able to trust his own eyes. His uniform is dishevelled, but there are no bruises on his face, no cuts or abrasions that need tending to, and he stands in the doorway and just looks back at Chanyeol with a gaze so empty it almost scares him.

“Yeonseok!”

It’s Baekhyun. Baekhyun who breaks the tension, Baekhyun who runs forward to fling his arms around Yeonseok. He looks up into Yeonseok’s face and asks in his small, whispering voice if he’s okay, and the emptiness in Yeonseok’s eyes breaks. He hugs Baekhyun back, pats his hair reassuringly, and looks over his head to meet Chanyeol’s eyes as he says, “I’m fine.”

It’s a lie. Yeonseok is controlled, doesn’t let it show, but Chanyeol can see it and hear it anyway, his heart responding to the lie with a little crack. Instead of saying anything, he reaches out towards his boyfriend, silently begging for him to take his hands. Chanyeol doesn’t really realise he has closed his eyes until he finds warm fingers wrapped around his and has to open them again to see Yeonseok right in front of him. Baekhyun has backed away and now stands off to the side, watching them both anxiously, fists clenched to his chest.

“I’m so glad you’re back home safely,” Chanyeol says.

“Me too.” Yeonseok’s voice is rougher than usual, and Chanyeol can’t stop himself. Yeonseok’s lips are warm and a little chapped, just like always. He curls his fingers gently around Yeonseok’s wrist, feels his radial pulse pushing strongly against his fingers. His breath is hot on Chanyeol’s cheek. He’s alive, he’s breathing and he’s unharmed. Chanyeol hears Baekhyun’s light footsteps retreating as he gives them space to just be with each other, and he closes his eyes again, wanting to never let go.

Yeonseok remains controlled all through the evening. He tells them he’d rather not talk about it, and then acts completely normal throughout dinner and a couple of episodes of the drama they’ve been watching afterwards. It’s not until they’re lying in bed with the lights off, Yeonseok’s back pushed against Chanyeol’s chest, that the first crack begins to show. Chanyeol rests his hand on Yeonseok’s stomach, just so he can feel every breath he takes, in and out in a slow, relaxed manner.

“Tell me about it,” Chanyeol whispers. Yeonseok’s breathing stops for a second before it resumes the slow, relaxed rhythm. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“A couple of teams from my station were sent over to help Hongdae precinct,” Yeonseok murmurs. “It only took us twelve minutes to get there, but the shooter had already been apprehended by the first responders. We were just on damage control.” Chanyeol feels all the muscles in Yeonseok’s back and shoulders tense and relax, tense and relax as he forces himself to remain calm. “It was bad. So many students, just kids really, all shot dead in one place. I’ve seen a lot of horrific things, Yeol, but this was the worst.”

Chanyeol rubs his hand over Yeonseok’s shoulders. He knows there’s nothing he can say. Yeonseok has been trained to handle this, and he’ll be debriefed professionally, have mandatory counselling along with the other officers who were at the scene. All he can do is listen and give his support and love.

“I knew the officer who was killed,” Yeonseok says after a short silence. His voice is still so steady, despite the continued clenching and relaxing of his muscles. “We weren’t close or anything, but we were on the same traffic control squad for a while, a few years back. He always acted grumpy, but he’d let parents off with a warning instead of a fine if they had young kids in the backseat.”

Chanyeol wriggles closer and rests his head against Yeonseok’s hair. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs, so quietly it’s almost inaudible, but the vibrations are shared between their bodies. He wishes there was something he could do to make this better, but he knows there isn’t anything more he can do but be here.

“I’ll be okay,” Yeonseok says. “I am okay, really. I’m not hurt. My family is safe. Everyone from my station is fine. We’ll process it and move on, the way we always do.”

“It still fucking sucks,” Chanyeol says, and Yeonseok’s body shakes in a silent laugh of agreement.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice breaks, just a little. “It really fucking sucks.”


	24. April 30th

The mother lies on her back on the operating room table. She’s covered almost entirely by green surgical drapes, except for the lower section of her pregnant abdomen, which has been cleaned and prepped for C-section. The tray full of surgical instruments is ready, tidy rows of scalpels, forceps, scissors and retractors all laid out, and a theatre nurse stands beside them, silent and faceless in gown, cap and mask. All around the OR are more theatre staff, crowding the table and seeming to loom over Jongdae like disapproving statues. He feels small and uncertain among them. The EKG monitor scrawls readout lines across the table, spiking up with each beat of the mother’s heart.

 _Hurry!_ The urge seems to come from all around him, bringing with it a shiver of dread that starts in the centre of his chest and makes its way down his arms and legs to tingle in his fingers and the soles of his feet. _Hurry, or it will be too late!_

Jongdae knows the baby is in distress. He knows the mother is under general anesthesia rather than epidural, though the reason why escapes him right now. There must be a good reason, but all he knows right now is that the urgent call is right - he must hurry. He reaches out a hand and a scalpel is put into it. He makes his first cut, a low transverse incision below the mother’s navel - the baby must be in vertex position, head down, or he would have planned a different incision. The layer of yellow fat becomes visible, and gloved hands appear from beside him and across the table, helping him part the fat until they reach the muscle.

 _Hurry!_ Jongdae glances up at the wall clock and finds that ten minutes have elapsed. Confusion mixed with panic thrusts its way into him. How can ten minutes have passed already? This stage should take less than a minute. Jongdae has a reputation for performing the swiftest and most accurate C-sections in the hospital, how can it possibly have taken him ten minutes just to make his first incision?

He looks back down at the surgical wound. The red muscle is visible below the fat. He sections the central conjunctive tissue with scissors, the hands of his assistants strong and sure as they apply traction with forceps. Someone places a Doyen’s retractor to prepare a perfect surgical field, and now Jongdae is looking at the surface of the uterus, pink and patterned with blood vessels. He glances at the wall clock again and sees that twenty minutes have passed now. His panic increases. He doesn’t understand why it’s taking him so long, and he doesn’t have time for this, he can't mess around like an amateur when the baby is in distress and the mother is under general anaesthesia.

 _What_ _are you waiting for? Hurry up!_ He’s not sure which of the statue-like assistants has spoken, but whoever they are, they’re right. He needs to hurry. But the sight of the uterus has him locked frozen, scalpel hovering just above the surface, and he’s sick with dread, because this is where it happens. This is where the blood comes.

 _You have to do it!_ Pulsing urgency is everywhere, in him, in the walls, in the assistants, in the patient, in the unborn baby. He cannot wait. Blood or no blood, this baby is in distress, and he must save it. He places the scalpel to the uterus and sections it.

Blood flows out over his hands like a river, far more than there should be, far more than is surely possible, and yet the blood just keeps on coming. It’s all over his gown, it’s on the assistants, pooling over the table and pouring to the floor like a waterfall, splattering him, drenching him. Jongdae shakes his head desperately and reaches into the uterus for the baby’s head. It’s a full-term baby and should be right there, impossible to miss as it fills the entire womb, but somehow he can’t find it, and his hand gropes wildly in a pool of hot blood. There are cries from the assistants, from the anaesthesiologists, and though he can’t really take in their exact words he knows their meaning; _she’s crashing! She’s bleeding out! Get that baby out now or they’re both going to die!_

Jongdae is gasping as he looks for the fetus. He can’t see, can’t see for blood. He needs suction but he can’t get the words out. What are the assistants doing? Why aren’t they helping him? He looks up frantically and the walls of the OR are dripping, painted in blood, and one of the assistants grabs his shoulder and starts to shake him, calling his name. “Jongdae, you’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, wake up -”

Jongdae’s eyes fly open. He sees darkness, feels softness around him, there’s a hand on his shoulder and he sits up, panting, throat feeling like it’s sticking together, lungs seizing. Ahreum is sitting up too, half-turned in the bed to face him, her hand on his shoulder. She’d been leaning over him to wake him.

"Thank you," he gasps, desperately relieved to have been saved from the nightmare. His skin feels slick, and he has a sudden, terrible fear that it’s blood, but when he stares down at his arms and hands, there’s nothing but the sheen of sweat covering his skin.

Ahreum leans over to the side of the bed to turn on the lamp, illuminating the bedroom in a soft glow. A cup of water from the bedside table is placed in his shaking hand and he gulps it down.

“Was it the same one?” Ahreum asks. Her hand is on his back now, uncaring about how sweaty he is.

Jongdae lets out a long, shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I woke you up again.”

“You can’t help it,” Ahreum says softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jongdae shakes his head. Sweat rolls down from his hairline and he scrubs his damp face in his hands. He feels disgusting, whole body slippery with sweat. His t-shirt is soaked. He pushes the blanket aside. “I need to shower,” he says, glancing at the digital clock on the side-table. “It’s nearly five - I would have been up in half an hour anyway. Go back to sleep, love.”

He turns on all the lights in the bathroom, the one above the mirror as well as the overhead, chasing the echoes of his nightmare away with the bright, clean walls of reality. He showers with the water on full blast, prickling his skin. The OR of his nightmare is unrealistic, belonging more to a horror movie than a clinically accurate situation, but the panic of it still clings to him. It’s not the specifics of the nightmare that are so bad, though they’re horrific enough in their graphic imagery; it’s the feelings that come with it. The fear that he’s going to lose the mother, or the baby, or both. The fear that he’s not fast enough, not skilled enough, and that it’s all his fault. They’re fears that belong to the waking world as well as in his dreams.

When he goes back into the bedroom to get dressed, he finds the covers pushed back and the bed empty. He hears the sound of the coffee grinder coming from the kitchen and sighs a little as he pulls on a pair of dark jeans and a soft button-down shirt. He feels awful for disturbing Ahreum’s sleep as well as his own, but she wouldn’t hear of it when he’d suggested he sleep on the couch until the nightmares became less frequent.

There’s steaming coffee waiting for him on the kitchen table when he walks in, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. Ahreum is already sitting down, hands wrapped around her own mug, and Jongdae sits opposite her wearily.

“I’m on call today,” he says in response to her querying look. “That’s probably why I had it.” Although he performs C-sections much more frequently as a planned procedure rather than an emergency one, it’s the emergencies that scare him. Planned C-sections are so much more under control, and the mother is usually only under epidural, avoiding the greater risks of general anaesthesia. He picks up his mug and takes a careful sip of coffee. Ahreum watches him, her gentle eyes full of concern.

Thanks to Soomin’s prompting, Jongdae told Ahreum four weeks ago about the subject matter of his nightmares. Not in specifics, there’s no need to horrify her; she just knows that he dreams of losing pregnant patients in the OR, and that he’s probably getting them because of the recent table deaths. When Ahreum had just hugged him and thanked him for telling her, and appeared completely unaffected by it, he’d worked up his courage and told her a few days later about the severe stress response he’s been getting when he hears his pager go off.

Now Ahreum gets out her phone from the pocket of her dressing gown and lays it on the table. “Would it be a good idea to practice, if you’ll be hearing your pager a lot today?”

This is a benefit of telling Ahreum about his struggles that Jongdae had never thought of; she’s been able to think of specific things that might help him. The day after he’d told her about the pager issue, Ahreum had suggested they practice listening to the beeping noise in a safe situation where Jongdae can calm himself. She’d downloaded an audio clip of a pager to her phone, and they’d sat on the couch while she played it over and over and Jongdae had gone through the breathing and relaxation exercises Soomin had shown him, consciously relaxing the muscles that tensed up when the pager noise went. They’ve been doing it regularly, and it’s been amazingly helpful. Jongdae is almost at the point where the pager going only gives him a quick flash of panic, and he’s starting to dread it less, too.

“Sure,” he says now, and Ahreum plays the audio clip. The harsh, intrusive beeping fills the kitchen, and Jongdae closes his eyes and breathes slowly. The kitchen is warm and smells like coffee and cooked rice from the overnight rice cooker, and Ahreum’s hand is laid on top of his, soft as she strokes the back of his wrist with her fingertips. Jongdae opens his eyes and finds she’s smiling at him.

“You’re doing really well,” she says, and Jongdae interlaces their fingers across the table, smiling back as his heart warms.

“You’re so good at this kind of thing,” he says when the audio clip finishes.

“I’m just happy you let me in enough to help you,” Ahreum says. “That counsellor knows what she’s talking about.”

“She does,” Jongdae agrees. “I might go talk to her again if I get a quiet moment today.”

“What about?”

“See if she’s got any ideas about dealing with the nightmares,” Jongdae says. “I can’t keep on waking you up like this, it’s not fair to you.”

“It’s not fair to you either,” Ahreum says. “You don’t get enough sleep anyway, what with Chief Heo loading you up so much these days, and I hate seeing you suffering like that.”

“It’s just a nightmare,” Jongdae says reassuringly, avoiding the issue of Chief Heo and her renewed vendetta towards him. He knows he just has to keep his head down and accept all the extra work until he’s proven that he won’t challenge her authority again. “It’s not real.”

“The feelings are real,” Ahreum says. “You’re terrified when you’re stuck in that nightmare. I’m sure it’s not good for you to go through it so often.”

“I’ll talk to Soomin,” Jongdae promises. He has her card in his wallet, which lists the hours she’s in the clinic over on B block. He can’t count on being available when she makes her hospital rounds.

He’s in his office mid-way through the morning when the ED pages him. He swallows the flash of panic and takes a deep breath as he turns the noise off. Nothing to be afraid of, not until he’s seen the patient. The reassurance is coming more easily with practice, becoming more instinctive. He heads down to the ED, where he’s directed to a room in which a 23-year-old woman has presented at 28.5 weeks gestation with shortness of breath, dizziness, and edema in her feet and ankles. When he gets there, he finds Minseok and Joonmyun already in the room, and concern rises up in him. The presence of the chief of the emergency department and a cardiothoracic surgeon tells him that this case is likely to be serious. He glances at the EKG, which is showing a rapid pulse of 115 beats per minute. Joonmyun has his stethoscope on her chest, face intent as he listens to her heart. Jongdae walks over to the bed, introducing himself to the patient and her partner as Joonmyun straightens up.

“There is a blowing holosystolic murmur,” Joonmyun says, more to Minseok than Jongdae. “I’ll need an echocardiogram.” He steps back to call the technician, and Jongdae starts an obstetric abdominal exam, pressing his lips together at the news of the murmur. Managing heart disease in pregnancy comes with a whole extra set of risks and challenges, and his examination tells him her heart is not the only issue.

“Incarcerated gravid uterus,” he tells the other two doctors. It’s a rare condition where the uterus is trapped between the sacral promontory and pubic symphysis, and as the baby grows it’s going to put even more pressure on the already struggling heart, potentially compressing the vena cava and reducing cardiac output. Minseok looks between them both, then beckons them across the room to discuss the case. Jongdae is intensely grateful for the other two doctors being here. Not only does he know them both personally, which is always reassuring, they’re a couple of years older and more experienced than him, and he’s never forgotten how nice Joonmyun was about checking patients Jongdae should know better than to call consults for. This particular patient, however, definitely needs the cardiothoracic surgeon’s input.

“So, we have symptomatic severe mitral stenosis in a pregnant patient,” Minseok says. “Thoughts?”

“The MS needs treating urgently,” Joonmyun says. “She needs a valve replacement, but a CPB in pregnancy has significant fetal and maternal risks.” He looks at Jongdae. “What are the chances of a successful C-section at this stage?”

“28.5 weeks is early preterm, but it’s doable,” Jongdae says. He glances at the patient. She’s watching them over her oxygen mask, probably trying to get some clue as to what they’re talking about. Their eyes meet and he sends her a quick reassuring smile before looking back at the others. “The fetal survival rate is 80 to 90 percent. There’s certainly a much higher risk of mortality in the setting of cardiopulmonary bypass. Of course, there are the developmental concerns for the preterm baby to consider, but we’d be better talking to a neonatologist for that.”

“Might be a good idea,” Joonmyun agrees. “It’ll depend on the echo results, but I doubt we have time to wait until the baby is full term.”

“I’ll get the on-call neonatologist down here,” Minseok says, and steps aside from the door as the technician appears, pushing the portable echocardiogram on its wheeled trolley.

“Are you happy to do an emergency C-section if it comes to that?” Joonmyun asks Jongdae. They’re still standing close together while Minseok talks on his phone to the neonatologist, but Joonmyun’s eyes are on the technician as she talks to the patient, explains the procedure, and begins the echo.

“Happy might not be the right word for it,” Jongdae says wryly, “but if she needs an urgent valve replacement, we don’t have much choice. I wouldn’t want her carrying to term with an incarcerated gravid uterus anyway, that’s only going to make matters worse for her heart.” He tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. Emergency C-section on a patient at risk of cardiac arrest - it’s his nightmare all over again, but he forces the image of the blood-painted OR walls out of his mind. It’s not going to happen. The situation is going to be under control. He will not let his fears rule him.

The neonatologist turns up while Joonmyun is reading the echo results. Jongdae knows her quite well as their specialities overlap so often; tall and athletic with a thick rope of hair plaited down her back and wide dark eyes, Dr. Choi Minjung smiles and greets them as she enters the exam room. With four specialists and a technician now present, as well as the patient on the bed and her partner sitting beside her, the room is getting crowded, and they’re forced to huddle close as the technician starts to maneuver the bulky echo trolley out of the room again.

Joonmyun is looking tense now that he’s seen the echocardiogram results; the murmur is bad enough that he wants to replace the valve urgently. The fetus could already be suffering from the loss of blood flow, and Dr. Choi confirms that the risks to the baby's development on early C-section are worth it. They can’t risk the mother going into cardiogenic shock because they waited a couple of weeks for the fetus to be that bit stronger.

They discuss several options and eventually come to an agreement on the best way to proceed. With the mother under epidural, Jongdae will perform a C-section while Joonmyun and his cardiothoracic team stand by in the OR, ready to take over in case of a cardiac emergency. Assuming the C-section goes to plan, Joonmyun will do the valve replacement within 24 hours of the C-section birth to reduce the risk of bleeding due to the normal postpartum fluid shifts. They’ll also have anaesthesiology on standby and have venous and arterial access already established, so that if the mother becomes unstable during the C-section Joonmyun and his team will be able to go straight into emergency heart surgery, but they all hope it won’t come to that.

As the main condition is mitral stenosis, Joonmyun agrees to admit her to cardiology. He waits to explain the plan to the patient, and Jongdae heads up to the OR to get ready for the emergency C-section. The largest OR is prepared due to needing two medical teams present, plus Dr. Choi who will take the infant directly to the NICU. When they’re all inside and the patient is ready, Jongdae is suddenly reminded again of his dream. There are so many people in the room, strangely identical in their gowns and masks, and unless Joonmyun needs to take over in the event of cardiac instability, Jongdae is the lead surgeon. All their attention is on him. He takes a steadying breath and glances over at Joonmyun where he waits against the wall. The cardiothoracic surgeon smiles at him behind his mask and gives him a cheerful double thumbs-up. Jongdae smiles back despite the anxious tension in his stomach and turns back to the patient to start the procedure.

It’s not really like his dream, not even at this stage. The mother is awake, the epidural numbing her only from the belly down. The nurses by her head are talking to her, reassuring her as Jongdae works. He’s using a low vertical incision instead of a low transverse, as the fetus is still in breech and hasn’t turned head-down yet. There’s no unexpected river of blood as he enters the uterus.

“Baby’s coming out,” Jongdae announces loud enough for the mother to hear, a smile in his voice as he deftly unhooks the umbilical cord from around the fetus and eases it into the world.

“Already?” the mother sounds startled.

“Dr. Kim is one of our swiftest surgeons,” one of the nurses tells her. Jongdae glances up at the wall clock as his assistants cut the cord; time from incision to birth has been less than four minutes. He passes the tiny baby into Minjung’s waiting hands. “A beautiful baby girl,” Minjung takes time to tell the mother as she quickly wipes the baby down and prepares to whisk her away to the NICU, where she’ll live in an incubator until she’s big enough to brave the outside world. Jongdae doesn’t turn away from the incision in the mother’s abdomen. He takes the suturing tools the nurse passes him and begins the process of removing the placenta and closing the surgical wound.

After they’re done and the mother is taken to recovery, Jongdae scrubs out along with the rest of his team. The relief coursing through him is making him feel slightly shaky. He leans against the trough sink and takes several deep breaths to calm himself. He hadn’t realised just how much stress he’d been holding inside himself until the C-section was successfully over.

Joonmyun is waiting for him in the corridor, arms folded as he leans against the wall. He’d scrubbed out a little before Jongdae once they were sure the mother was stable during the birth. He smiles at Jongdae as he comes out of the scrubbing area and pushes away from the wall to fall into step with him.

“Fantastic job,” he says.

Jongdae shakes his hands out, trying to get the adrenaline out of them. “I’m just relieved she stayed stable throughout the procedure."

“The fact that she did is probably thanks to your swift work,” Joonmyun tells him. Jongdae laughs a little, shrugging the praise off. “No, I’m serious,” Joonmyun says. “The anaesthesiologist mentioned it too. You kept both mother and child under as little stress as was feasibly possible.”

Jongdae’s pretty sure Joonmyun is only saying that because he knows Jongdae’s been struggling a little lately, but he appreciates the thought, so he smiles at the older surgeon and changes the subject, asking if he has time to join him for a quick coffee break, to which Joonmyun cheerfully agrees that he does.

“How are Yejin and Yejoon doing?” Jongdae asks when they’ve grabbed takeaway coffee-mix from one of the hallway machines and headed up to the rooftop for a breath of fresh air. Spring has fully arrived, and the ornamental potted trees on the rooftop are in bloom, white and pink cherry blossoms dancing in the cool breeze overhead as they sit on one of the green-painted benches. Joonmyun lights up as he starts to talk of his baby son, and shows Jongdae at least twenty pictures on his phone. Yejoon is at the stage of lying on his front and holding his head up on his own.

“They grow so quickly.” Jongdae shakes his head as he watches a video clip of Yejoon flapping his arms and legs as he rocks on his stomach, burbling and squealing with the sheer joy of moving. “It seems like only yesterday I was delivering him.”

“They do,” Joonmyun agrees, and sighs. “Sometimes it feels terrifying. These precious times are flying by so fast, and if I blink I’ll miss them. Did you ever feel like that with yours?”

“Oh, yes,” Jongdae nods. “Children change so quickly, it’s almost inevitable that we feel like that. I remember Chorong being small enough to lie in the crook of my arm, and now she’s just turned seven and up to my elbow already.”

“Honestly, I worry I’m missing out, by the nature of my work,” Joonmyun admits. Jongdae glances at him, hearing the more serious note in his voice. “I still can’t believe I’m a dad sometimes. When I have to focus during emergencies or long surgeries, I don’t think of him for hours and hours, and then I’ll come home and it’s like he’s grown overnight. One day I’m going to come home and he’ll be sixteen and I won’t even recognize him.” He laughs. “Stupid, right?”

Jongdae shakes his head. “It’s not stupid. It’s what we have to give up to provide for our families. I’ve been in a similar situation recently, because my department’s understaffed and I’ve been doing crazy hours, and I start to wonder what I’m doing sometimes. Why am I at work all the time instead of spending time with my kids, who are growing and changing every day and leaving me behind?”

“That’s the feeling exactly,” Joonmyun says, and Jongdae sees the sadness creep over his face as he empathizes. “It feels like being left behind. But you’re right. Someone has to provide, that’s the way society works. I just wish I could stop freaking out about it all the time.”

“All we can do is give them the best we can in the time we have. You’re still a pretty new dad, you know.” Jongdae sends Joonmyun a teasing smile. “It does get better. When I remember how much I panicked over every little thing Chorong did, compared to Mari as my third...” he shakes his head. “It’s like night and day, honestly.”

“You must have been pretty young, too, with Chorong, if she’s already seven?”

Jongdae laughs a little as he remembers those days. “Yeah, I was 23. If you think you don’t have time now, imagine having your first kid while still in junior residency. I was barely more than a kid myself, working 90-hour weeks, coming home to a newborn who only slept for three hours at a time max. I still don’t know how we survived it. It was probably only because Ahreum’s family were so supportive. Her parents and siblings had some kind of rotating “save-Jongdae-and-Ahreum” roster for the first six months, I think.”

“It was worth it, though?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t be without any of them. And of course, even when work’s crazy, I do my best to do fun things with them when I can. There’s a special event at Bukhansan Zoo for Children’s Day next weekend and we’re taking the kids. Minseok’s bringing his daughters too.” He brightens a little. “Hey, do you want to join us? Bring Yejin and Yejoon, it’ll be fun. Fair warning, Minseok’s daughters will probably try to adopt Yejoon, though.”

Joonmyun laughs, but looks interested at the idea and says he’ll check his schedule, so Jongdae adds his number and creates a group chat with Minseok so they can finalize times to meet closer to the event. Then they both realise they’re out of break time and have to head back inside the hospital.

Jongdae forces himself to stop catching up on his documentation at four in the afternoon, remembering his promise to Ahreum to talk to Soomin today if he could. According to her card, her office hours finish at five, so he walks across the campus to the psychiatry building. Despite having worked at Hangang for his whole career, Jongdae hasn’t entered the building since his intern rotation in psychiatry, and he has to ask the receptionist in the outpatients clinic to direct him to Soomin’s office.

Soomin’s office is on the ground floor, at the end of the corridor past all the outpatient psychiatry rooms, and her door is open. She’s not with a client and is focused on her computer when Jongdae approaches the doorway. He hesitates on the threshold for a moment, glancing around the office. She has a floor-to-ceiling window with a view to the enclosed psychiatry building gardens, where Jongdae can see a couple of patients walking or sitting outside now that the weather is warmer, and there are a couple of framed traditional Chinese artworks on the walls. About to knock on the doorframe, Jongdae pauses with hand raised as his attention is drawn by the art, particularly a dynamic one of a blue dragon twisting around a snarling tiger.

“My grandmother painted them.”

Jongdae blinks. Soomin has noticed him standing in the doorway and followed his gaze to the framed artwork.

“They’re really beautiful,” Jongdae says, and Soomin smiles at him, the same kindly smile as always.

“Come in, Jongdae. You’ve caught me at a good time. I was getting sick of documentation.”

“I know the feeling,” Jongdae laughs. “I abandoned some myself to come see you.” He steps into her office and hesitates again as he wonders whether to close the door. Normally he’d close the door during a consultation, but he just wants a casual conversation, nothing serious, and somehow closing the door makes him feel like he’s turning this into an actual therapy session, a much bigger deal than he needs or wants.

Soomin takes his dilemma out of his hands by walking over and closing the door herself, somehow making it seem perfectly natural as she gestures to him to take a seat adjacent to her desk. Jongdae still feels uneasy, a little uncomfortable in his own skin. He smiles brightly at her to hide it. “I just thought it was time I fulfilled your request of brightening up your office, so here I am!”

“I’m glad you came,” Soomin says as she sits back down by her desk and smiles at him. “I’ve been wondering how you were getting on. How have you been finding the CBT?”

Jongdae tells her it’s going well and how telling Ahreum about a couple of his worries has worked out much better than he’d thought. When that topic come sto a close, he finds himself wanting to squirm. Admitting to getting nightmares makes him feel about Chorong’s age. He leans forward and picks up a toy sitting on her desk, a mini Hoberman sphere in rainbow colours. Again, he feels like a child, needing to play with something tactile to take his mind off what he’s saying. He assumes that’s why she has the toy in the first place, and reassures himself that this makes it okay, that it’s normal to need this.

“Um, so I was wondering,” he says as he makes the jointed rods of the sphere contract down into a small, dense ball and expand again between his hands. He watches the sphere’s movements rather than meet her eyes. “This is going to sound really dumb, but do you have any tips on dealing with recurrent nightmares? I mean, if it was just me, I’d just grin and bear it, you know? But I thrash around and cry out, apparently, and it wakes up Ahreum too.” He scrunches the sphere tight, feeling the back of his neck start to heat up. “It’s pretty stupid, I know, but it’s kind of intrusive, and you had such good ideas about...the other thing, so I wondered...” he trails off, trying not to feel humiliated at having admitted to having bad dreams like a little kid.

“There are several effective techniques we can try for that,” Soomin tells him. Her voice is as calm as ever, and Jongdae feels a little tension ease from his shoulders. “Is it the same nightmare each time?”

“Yes.” Jongdae makes the sphere fly wide.

“Can you describe it to me?”

Jongdae tells her how the dream goes. Soomin, as he’d known, really, she would be, is completely non-judgemental about the whole thing. She tells him about rehearsal therapy, which entails visualising the nightmare, but changing the storyline so that it has a positive outcome. He can also try lucid dreaming, becoming aware by certain cues that the thing happening to him can’t be real, and then once he’s aware he’s dreaming he can either change the dream or choose to wake himself up.

“I could try that.” Jongdae is rather intrigued by this idea. “I could try and make the wall clock in the OR be the cue, the first time I look up, before I get to the horror movie part. I know it’s impossible for my first incision to take ten minutes, so if I can remember that a ten-minute incision means I must be dreaming, I’d be able to wake myself up.”

“That’s a good idea. You can try integrating it with the rehearsal therapy,” Soomin says. “Before you go to sleep, visualize yourself starting the dream, performing the first incision and looking up at the clock. When you see ten minutes has passed, visualise yourself understanding that you’re dreaming and waking yourself up, or changing the dream into something positive and safe for you.”

Jongdae nods. “Thanks. I’ll try it.” He glances up at the clock, about to say he’d better get going and leave her to finish her work, but perhaps anticipating this, Soomin speaks again.

“How are things with Dr. Heo?”

Jongdae goes completely still as apprehension floods him. He feels suddenly lost, his control of the situation slipping like grains of sand between his fingers. He watches her tensely. He needs her to give him a cue, so he can respond to it and use it to claw his way back into a normal, functional conversation. After a few long beats of silence during which his distress only grows and grows, Soomin speaks again.

“I’m asking because of what you said last time we talked. Do you remember?” She’s speaking very gently now, and much more slowly. This is a good thing, because Jongdae is finding it hard to take in what she’s saying. “You told me, in these words, that Dr. Heo physically backed you into a corner and emotionally blackmailed you into taking extra shifts.”

“Wow, you have a good memory,” Jongdae says, anxiously trying to smile as he latches onto the topic. He had not meant to say that, back then, and he wishes she hadn’t remembered. “Eidetic, or just smart?”

Soomin smiles at him, but doesn’t let him distract her. “You didn’t want to talk about it last time. Would it be okay if we discuss it now?”

“There’s not really anything to discuss," Jongdae says. "She just…” he trails off, trying to figure out how to explain it without having to actually think about it. “I guess she just doesn’t like me. She never has, really, right from when I was on my ob-gyn rotation as an intern.”

Soomin is still looking at him, giving him her full attention, but he can’t meet her eyes any more. He stares down at the Hoberman sphere, now compressed to a spiky rainbow-coloured ball between his hands. He squeezes it harder, feeling the plastic indent into his skin. “It’s not a big deal. It’s my fault anyway. I must have acted pretty arrogant back then, because she had to put me in my place a lot. She probably still sees me as that kid who needs to be taught how to behave, to respect my seniors.”

“When you say “put you in your place”, what do you mean specifically?”

Jongdae swallows. “Oh, you know. Just the usual things.” Specifics are so not happening. He’s not even going to think about it. “It got better when I learned, and it hasn’t been a problem in years, nothing major anyway. This recent thing is only because I argued about how many hours I was getting, and she, well...she had to teach me again. She was right, too, you know? I do have to work harder. Like she said, I have three deaths on my hands.” His voice is starting to stound strange in his ears, and his ears are burning, neck hot as old shame mixed with new guilt crawls up it. This is no good. He can’t do this. He refuses to do this. He laughs, as brightly as he can, to chase the feeling away, and the blunt spikes of the Hoberman sphere dig purple grooves into his palms.

“Jongdae, that’s not true. You know those deaths were not your fault.” Soomin says this very firmly, but Jongdae can’t take any more. He puts the Hoberman sphere back on her desk with a decisive click, meets her eyes, and smiles as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“I know,” he says. “Cognitive dissonance, right? I remember. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s only me she has a problem with. I’ll just keep my head down until things get better.” He stands up. “I should go, I still have a lot to do.”

“Jongdae, I don’t think we should end this here -”

“I’m very sorry,” he says, and his politeness is a glass wall around him, and his smile is glass-fragile too. “I really can’t stay any longer.”

“Okay,” Soomin says. “I’m always here, if you want to talk about anything at all. Come visit me again soon? I’d like to hear how the rehearsal therapy goes.”

Jongdae gives a vague agreement, smiles his best smile, thanks her again. He makes his way out of her office without a backward glance, walking swiftly back across the grounds towards the main hospital building, hands pushed deep into his coat pockets against the dropping late afternoon temperature.

He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that it feels awfully like running away.

\---

“Dr. Do!”

Kyungsoo gives a quiet groan. It’s the voice of the new radiologist, Dr. Cho. The man has, for some reason utterly inexplicable to Kyungsoo, decided that Kyungsoo is his favourite person in the whole department. He calls for Kyungsoo daily to show him interesting imaging findings, but Kyungsoo has worked in radiology for too long to find anything but the rarest findings exciting. He doesn’t mind checking things over for his colleagues if they need it or helping the residents when they’re lost, and he has gotten used to the occasional question from the technicians. What bothers him about Dr. Cho is the man’s incessant need to talk. Constantly.

The call of his name is followed by a knock on his door. Kyungsoo looks up from his screen and sends a flat stare at the new doctor, who seems absolutely oblivious to every antisocial tactic Kyungsoo has tried to get him to stay away. He must be the thickest-skinned person on the planet. Dr. Cho responds to Kyungsoo’s glare with an oblivious smile and nods back towards his own office. “Come take a look at this.”

Kyungsoo sighs heavily, not even trying to hide his annoyance. The MRI scan on his screen will have to wait. He follows Dr. Cho the short distance to his office and looks over his shoulder. The CT scan shows a badly fractured ankle, but it’s nothing particularly unusual. Kyungsoo just doesn’t understand why Dr. Cho has this compelling need to show him everything.

“He’s done a number on that ankle,” Kyungsoo says, because he knows that he needs to acknowledge what he’s seeing before Dr. Cho will let him go. The other doctor agrees enthusiastically and begins to measure the angles. Kyungsoo slinks back to his own office, closes the door and goes back to the grey-tone MRI on his screen. The coronal section shows a brain with three metastases from primary ovarian cancer. Even with his limited knowledge of neurology and oncology, it doesn’t look good. The biggest of the three is located in the cerebellum and it looks aggressive. He changes the pictures to the transverse plane and walks through each picture, measuring the metastases and noting their location. He describes his findings to the system as he goes through the pictures, then moves on to the next scan.

His office is dark and silent just as he likes, so he doesn’t notice it’s lunch time until he hears voices from outside. Footsteps stop right in front of his office door and he groans. Please, save me someone, anyone, he begs and for once someone actually hears his prayers because his phone starts ringing. Kyungsoo puts his phone to his ear just as Dr. Cho looks inside.

“Hello? Kyungsoo, are you there?” a familiar voice asks in his ear. Kyungsoo realises he’s been so focused on watching Dr. Cho leave in disappointment that he’s forgotten to actually answer.

“Yes, sorry. Hi,” he says.

“Hey.” There’s a smile in Yixing’s voice. “You described the MRI on a patient of mine, Oh Eunji, earlier today, and Dr. Huang from neurosurgery and I would like to stop by your office and discuss the best way to proceed. I know I’m calling in the middle of lunch, but Dr. Huang has surgery scheduled after lunch. Is that okay?”

Kyungsoo glances at the small clock in the bottom of his computer screen. It is lunch time, true, but it won’t affect his work if he eats in half an hour instead of now. Besides, eating later might remove the stress of socialising with his coworkers, so he agrees and Yixing tells him they’ll be down in five minutes. Kyungsoo gets up to find a couple of chairs for his impending visitors in the hallway, bringing them into his office, then searches through his computer to find the MRI scan of Oh Eunji.

He’s just pulled up the images when there’s a knock on his door. Yixing sends him a kind smile as always and the tall, lanky young doctor following him introduces himself as Huang Zitao, a neurosurgery resident. They sit down and pull the chairs forward to gather in front of Kyungsoo’s three computer screens.

“Yikes,” Zitao says when he sees the three metastases visible on the coronal slice.

Yixing nods, the dimple in his cheek appearing at the young doctor’s reaction. “Yeah. Do you think any of them are operable?”

Kyungsoo moves a little away from the computer to let the neurosurgeon take over his mouse and flip through a few coronal slices of Eunji’s brain.

“The one in the cerebellum is definitely not,” he says. “It’s located in a really critical place. She must have a lot of neurological symptoms too.” He turns to Kyungsoo. “Do you have any transverse pictures?”

Kyungsoo reclaims his mouse and pulls up the images for him with a couple of clicks. Zitao narrows his eyes as he scrolls through the transverse slices.

“What about the one in the frontal lobe?” Yixing asks, pointing at the screen. Zitao frowns.

“That one might be possible.” They lean closer towards Kyungsoo’s computer and start talking about possible surgery. Kyungsoo’s stomach rumbles, not loud enough for anyone to hear, but enough to make him aware that he’s hungry. He hopes they’re not going to spend hours discussing this case in his office, it’s not like he can give much input on brain cancer.

“How big is the largest one?” Yixing asks him eventually. Kyungsoo squeezes himself back in front of the computer to measure out the distance from one end to the other and lets the other doctors look at the numbers on the screen. Zitao gives a sigh that sounds resigned, and Yixing goes quiet. Kyungsoo scrolls through some more of the pictures, but he doesn’t have anything more to say about them that he hasn’t already described to the system. He knows Zitao and Yixing won't be trying to cure this cancer. It's spread too far for that. They’re trying to figure out what will give the patient the most comfortable time before her inevitable death.

“Is surgery going to be worth it?” Kyungsoo asks. Yixing frowns a little at the screen without looking away from it, but Zitao leans back in his chair and stares at Kyungsoo. His gaze is a little intimidating, but maybe it’s just because of the blue smudges under his eyes that make him look so chronically tired.

“Her cancer has already progressed to this,” Kyungsoo clarifies his thought. “Any treatment is going to be palliative, right? Brain surgery might just be more traumatic without really benefiting her.”

Yixing pulls his eyes from the screen, turns to Zitao and pulls Kyungsoo’s question into their discussion. Zitao offers to operate on the tumour that seems the least complicated, but in the end they agree on radiation and skipping on surgery. Kyungsoo smiles and shakes his head when they thank him for his time, and the two of them start talking in Mandarin as they leave the department. He stands up and goes to find his lunch.

He gets his lunchbox from the fridge and heads back to his office to eat it. His phone lights up with a text message from his mother, asking him if he has time to join them for dinner this Sunday, and Kyungsoo flips the phone over without answering it. It’s his mother’s birthday and he will have to go home, but for now he just wants to empty his head and forget all the scans he’s seen today, all the illness and normal variations and bad referrals.

His peace is disturbed by a knock on his door and a feral growl he didn’t know he was capable of escapes him. He glares towards the door, sandwich in hand, as he expects his coworker to pop in, smiling and excited to show Kyungsoo some new findings, but Dr. Cho isn’t the one who pops his head inside. Instead it’s a man Kyungsoo wasn’t expecting in the slightest. Yifan smiles and nods his greetings, completely unaffected by Kyungsoo’s death glare.

“Late lunch?” he says as he opens the door more to get in. He turns on the ceiling light and Kyungsoo feels a little like a vampire, cringing and squinting at the sudden brightness. Yifan laughs at him.

“What are you doing here?” Kyungsoo asks, putting his sandwich down.

Yifan sits down on one of the chairs Yixing and Zitao vacated. “Had to get my stitches removed,” he says, pointing to his forehead. Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow.

“Didn’t faint this time? What a feat.”

“I’ll have you know I was very chill and there was no blood this time anyway,” Yifan retorts, huffing a little, and Kyungsoo can’t help the smile that escapes him.

“What a brave boy,” he says. Yifan cringes and snakes out a hand to try and steal his sandwich. Kyungsoo is quicker, grabbing it and scooting back on his wheeled chair. The back hits his desk and rattling the computer screens behind. Both men turn their gazes towards the electronics, but when nothing goes crashing over, they turn back to each other.

"What's up?" Kyungsoo asks.

Yifan leans back and stretches his legs out in front of him. “I wanted to tell you I have a partner now. We got together a while ago actually, but we weren't sure if it would go anywhere.”

Kyungsoo feels something heavy settle in his stomach like he has just swallowed a large stone. “Oh,” he says. It’s not really that Yifan has a partner that’s made his heart sink so much. It’s the fact that Kyungsoo doesn’t - and doesn’t want one - reminding him again that he’s abnormal. It had felt good to know that he wasn’t the only man his age without a partner, that men over 30 could enjoy life as single without being weird, but now the creeping feeling of abnormality slowly makes its way back.

“Yeah,” Yifan says. “You met him when I came in last time. Ryu Changwook. He’s my partner at GreenLine.”

Kyungsoo stares. “You’re dating a guy?” he asks, realising how blunt his voice sounds only when it’s already left his lips.

Yifan nods and sends him a beaming smile. He looks awfully proud of himself. Kyungsoo flashes back to a few weeks prior when Minseok had asked him if Yifan and Changwook were together. Damn, Minseok is good. How come Kyungsoo wasn’t able to see it when he’s been friends with Yifan for so long?

“Minseok asked me if you were gay when you left after the stitches. Said he had another friend who was gay. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming, I should’ve known with your outrageous fashion back in college,” Kyungsoo grumbles and Yifan laughs.

“Hey, I was a trendsetter, cutting edge, and saying otherwise is a lie.” Kyungsoo just raises an eyebrow in disagreement. “While we’re on the subject, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Do you know what asexuality is?”

His voice has changed. The bubbling laughter has subsided and he’s completely genuine. The change surprises Kyungsoo a little. It’s not often he sees Yifan this sincere. He also has never heard of the term asexuality so he shakes his head.

“I thought you might relate to it. Asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction to people,” Yifan says.

Kyungsoo shifts in his chair. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks. It sounds sarcastic but isn’t meant to be. Yifan leans forward, resting his long arms on his knees.

“I know you’ve always had a hard time with relationships -” he starts, but Kyungsoo interrupts him before he can continue.

“Not that. I mean...how can a human being have no sexual attraction to others? Procreation is the success of living. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Yifan turns more serious, his intense eyes staring deep into Kyungsoo’s soul, and it’s unnerving. He hopes Yifan doesn’t use this stare when he’s with clients because that would be terrifying.

“Procreation isn’t the measure of success in life. Success in life is happiness.”

“The human race can’t go on if we don’t procreate. It's a biological imperative.” Kyungsoo suddenly feels very small. Yifan just continues to look right into his soul.

“It's not about procreation, Kyungsoo, it's about our individual happiness. As far as I know, you haven’t felt any kind of sexual attraction in all the time I’ve known you. There are plenty of other constellations out there, and plenty of people willing to carry on the human race without us. I know you don't have a problem with homosexuality. Why is asexuality difficult for you to accept?”

Kyungsoo shifts again, uneasily. “In homosexuality there's still a sex drive, a function of desire. You make it sound like it's okay to not have that.”

“It is okay to not have that,” Yifan says, unusually gently.

“It’s abnormal,” Kyungsoo says. “Relationships are normal. Like, my mom really wants grandchildren. She keeps on pushing me towards women, but I just can't seem to…” Kyungsoo trails off, going quiet as he allows himself to wonder if there might actually be something in this whole asexuality thing. If the absence of sexual attraction is scientifically proven and actually something real, then maybe he’s not as abnormal as he’s believed all his life. Maybe there really is a place for him in this world without the awkward feeling of being wrong. Yifan leans back in his chair again, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. Kyungsoo glares at him when he finally realises what his friend is doing.

“You're psychoanalysing me,” he growls. "Stop it." Yifan laughs, holding both his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry, sorry. Just let yourself think about it, yeah? Maybe do some research on your own,” he says. Then he grins at him and says, “You should come over on Saturday so I can kick your ass in Counterstrike,” and it changes the atmosphere entirely. Kyungsoo is about to argue with Yifan about his ridiculous overestimation of his Counterstrike skills but another knock on the door interrupts them.

“Oh,” says Dr. Cho. “I didn’t know you had company, Dr. Do.” Kyungsoo tenses, hoping Dr. Cho will leave, but Yifan stands up instead.

“No worries, I was about to leave. See you on Saturday,” he tells Kyungsoo as he moves past Dr. Cho. Kyungsoo scowls at his back, wishing he’d stayed and given him the excuse to kick his colleague out. Dr. Cho is smiling again, eyes scrunched into small crescents.

“I found a cerebral venous air embolism, do you want to see?” he asks and Kyungsoo blinks, scowl fading. That is actually interesting as opposed to everything else he’s been shown in the last couple of days.

“Actually, yes.”

\---

The warm coffee sits untouched in front of her as people chatter happily in the small café in the warm spring afternoon. Songmi gazes down into the dark liquid as steam makes curling patterns on its surface. Her friend is running late, but Songmi doesn’t mind. She knows it would be harder to keep on time when there’s a small baby to look after, but the reminder of her own childlessness makes her sigh a little. No matter how much she assures Yixing that she doesn’t mind waiting until he’s ready to discuss it, she can’t help the longing that aches in her heart.

Yejin rushes into the café a minute later with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder and her hair flying everywhere. She dumps her bag next to her as she sits down and gasps for air as she apologises.

“Oh, you shouldn't have run. It’s okay, I haven’t been waiting for long,” Songmi reassures her friend but Yejin waves her away.

“It’s not…I always tell my students to be…to be on time…”

“Do you want me to order for you?” Songmi asks. Yejin shakes her head, still a little breathless.

“No, I’m fine.” She sends Songmi a happy smile before getting up and heading to the counter, returning a little later with a cappuccino and two cupcakes, one of which she pushes towards Songmi with a smile.

“Where’s Yejoon today?” Songmi asks.

“Joonmyun is watching him,” Yejin says, and Songmi blinks. It’s not that it’s surprising for a father to be with his son, but Yejin has told her about Joonmyun’s anxiety and she didn’t think he was up for the challenge of being all alone with Yejoon yet. “He'll be okay,” Yejin says as if she’s reading Songmi’s thoughts. Songmi nods, leaning back against her chair and drinking some of her coffee.

“How is life at the hospital?” Yejin asks. “Chief Kim isn’t working you too hard?”

“Oh no, the workload is fine. Sometimes it’s actually a relief to be at work, it takes my mind off everything else,” Songmi admits. Yejin looks slightly concerned, so Songmi sends her a smile. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just been difficult since we learned of Yixing’s infertility. I just…” she pauses and sighs heavily. “I know I agreed to hold off on the IVF topic and not push him, but I'm so ready, and Yixing would be an amazing father. I know it’s selfish to want to start when Yixing hasn’t worked through how he feels about it yet, but I can’t help it.”

Yejin leans forward and pats her hand across the table.

“It’s okay to be frustrated. Men are strange creatures when it comes to fatherhood,” she says.

“It is frustrating. There are treatments we could try to conceive, but Yixing doesn’t want to even talk about it. He’s so much happier now and I don’t want to upset him again, but I’m worried he’ll just push it into the background and forget about it because he doesn’t want to deal with how it makes him feel.”

Yejin pats her hand again. “I understand how you feel, but don’t give up hope,” she says. “It hasn’t been all that long since you found out. He might come around sooner than you think. He’s not changed his mind about wanting children, has he?”

“I don’t think so,” Songmi says. “It’s not that he doesn’t want kids. I think it’s a combination of his distress over the infertility, and the awful bleed he had after the car accident. He nearly died, and it really scared him. He’s afraid of passing the haemophilia gene on to our kids and grandkids.”

Yejin nods. “It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? I can understand why he’d want to just forget about the whole thing and pretend it never happened.”

“That’s exactly it. He wants everything to go back to the way it was, when everything was perfect for us. He doesn’t seem to understand that if we just try to overcome these obstacles, things can be even more perfect for us in the future, just in a different way.”

“Maybe when he’s recovered a little more from the emotional shock, he’ll be more open to discussing it again. It must have been overwhelming, both those things happening right on top of each other.”

“You’re right,” Songmi nods. “It was too much for him to cope with all at once, and it’s partly on me as well, because it never occurred to me that he’d have a problem with IVF and I didn’t understand how much pressure he was feeling.”

“Some people do put a lot of pressure on themselves,” Yejin says. “Joonmyun is the same. He thinks he has to be perfect, and if even the tiniest thing doesn’t go according to plan, it's like the world is going to end.”

Songmi sighs. “If only he saw himself the way I see him,” she says, and Yejin smiles sympathetically.

“Give it some time,” she says. “But also give me a call soon so you don’t have all these pent-up frustrations. They’re no good for your heart.”

Songmi smiles. “I shouldn't keep whining to you about my husband,” she says, and Yejin widens her eyes.

“No way!” she exclaims with a mischievous smile. “What better subject of gossip is there than our husbands?”

Songmi laughs. Her heart feels a little easier now that she’s talked about it. Yejin isn’t just a good listener, she also knows exactly when to be serious and when to be silly.

“Do you have anywhere to be after this?” Songmi asks, reaching around to grab her coat from her seat.

Yejin shakes her head. “No, why?”

Songmi stands up as she shrugs her jean-jacket over her shoulders. “I could use a new summer dress, if you want to come shopping.”

Yejin smiles and gets up immediately. “I always have time for a friend! Besides, I have a babysitter today, I should make the most of it.” Songmi smiles and grabs Yejin’s outstretched arm. The sun is shining from a clear sky and the afternoon is still warm, and they laugh together as they start down the street. Songmi feels very grateful for having met Yejin back in December. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship she appreciated very quickly, and only appreciates more each time they talk.


	25. May 5th

Sehun leans back on the bench, enjoying the breeze playing across his face. It’s a little overcast, but the trees around him are full of green leaves and the flower beds are colourful. He’s on call, but he’s decided to make the most of the weather before it craps out later. 

Sehun has spent a lot of time recently thinking about moving to Busan. The small practice he saw in February has been sold, but it planted a thought that never really seemed to go away. Speaking to Jongin about it vaguely had somehow spurred the thought along and now it has solidified into an actual plan. Somewhat. There is one very important person he needs to talk to before he can go any further along this path. 

He feels strangely nervous about calling his girlfriend. A stronger gust of wind has him shivering slightly and he pulls his light coat a little tighter around him. He's interrupted from his wandering thoughts when his phone starts ringing. He’s expecting it to be the hospital but when he has gotten his phone out of his pocked and in his hand, he sees the small picture attached to the caller number. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. 

“Morning,” she mumbles and Sehun stifles a laugh when he hears her yawn. 

“Morning? It's afternoon already. I can’t believe you’re still in bed,” he says. It rustles a little on her end as she repositions herself and sighs contentedly, probably snuggling into her pillow. Sehun’s heart gives a twinge. If he was there, he could lay beside her and gently push her hair away from her face and watch her smile.

“I'm sick, so I don't have to get up.” Mikyung’s excuse is the cutest thing Sehun has ever heard. “What are your plans this afternoon?”

“I’m on call,” he tells her. “You’re not allowed to get sick without me there to take care of you.”

Mikyung giggles. “It's just a cold. I wish you were here though.” She only manages to get the last word out before she yawns again. Sehun feels his heart twist again.

“I miss you,” he says suddenly. Mikyung hums and blows him a kiss he can hear over the phone and it somehow makes what he’s about to discuss with her a little easier. “I have to ask you something," he says. His voice has gone quiet, as though he’s ashamed of what he’s to say. He isn’t, but for some reason, it feels incredibly private and maybe too private to talk about on a park bench. 

“What is it?” Mikyung sounds more awake now, her voice changing in response to his. Neither of them like to have serious conversations on the phone, but the long-distance they’ve been keeping up for almost a year makes it necessary at times. Sehun realises he could - and maybe should - change over to a video call, but somehow it feels a little safer to just hear her right now. 

“Remember when I visited you in February?” he starts, then hesitates. Mikyung hums and asks him to continue. “I didn’t bring it up then because it was Valentine’s Day and I just wanted to spend it with you, but while I was there I walked past a private practice for sale and it made me think...that maybe I could leave the hospital here and go into private practice, maybe move to Busan.” His heart is beating faster by the time he's finished talking. He's trying to say it casually, but saying the words out loud is making him realise just how much emotional investment he has in what he's saying.

There’s a pause in their conversation and it feels long, longer than it should be. Sehun's heart is racing now. He licks chapped lips, and presses a hand to his chest to try and force his heart to calm itself.

“Do you want to move to Busan?” she asks slowly, and her tone is strange. Uncertainty makes itself known within Sehun's chest, curling around his pounding heart. “I mean, you don’t know anyone down here and you have a great job at the hospital. You’d be giving up everything.” 

Sehun clutches his phone. “I know you,” he says, _and that’s all I need_ , he wants to continue, but he’s suddenly too insecure to say it. “Do...do you not want me to move down?”

“It's not that,” Mikyung says. “I’d love it if you were here, of course I would, but Seoul is your life. All your friends and family are there, you have a stable job that pays well, a nice apartment and both our parents close by. Starting a private practice would be risky and stressful, and I don’t want you to mess up your life on my account. I don’t want you to have regrets.” 

A long moment of silence as they both consider the implications. Sehun's chest feels tight. He knows uprooting isn’t going to be easy, but he’s not being reckless. He’s thought it all through. If he doesn’t make it in private practice, he should be able to get a good recommendation from Hangang and find a position in a hospital in Busan. He will find new friends, meet new people. Sehun might be shy and a little introverted, but he can get past that when he has to. Doesn’t she think he’s capable?

“Sehun, are you still there?” Mikyung asks. 

“Yeah," he says. "I...I could never regret being closer to you.”

“But what if it doesn’t work out?” Mikyung asks. Sehun rubs his sternum. He thought she would’ve been ecstatic, but the way she keeps throwing up problems makes it feel like she's against the idea. 

“I...I mean, it's okay if you don't want me there...” he starts, but he can't go on. It feels like chains are being wrapped around his ribs.

“No, Sehun, I promise it's not that." Mikyung sounds desperate, but Sehun feels like he's going to choke, all his breath crushed out of him. "I want us together so much, but I’m not going to let you give up your dreams.”

“Mikyung,” Sehun croaks. “I’m not like that. I don’t have big dreams about my career. I just..." he swallows hard. "I just want to be happy again." 

“Oh, darling," Mikyung whispers. "Please don't sound like that. It's so hard to hear you upset when I can't be with you."

"I'm not upset," Sehun says, but his voice betrays him.

"You're unhappy. You have been all year. You always tell me you're doing okay on your own, and I wanted to believe you, but I knew you weren't, really."

"I _am_ doing okay," Sehun insists, and his voice is still shaking, damn it. "It's just...I don't know. My life was empty before you...and I thought I could get used to it again, but I can't. I don't want to keep on like this.”

There are a few moments of silence while Sehun grips the phone with white knuckles and tries to breathe right. It's so hard to talk about his feelings like this. It feels like his ribcage being cracked open and pulled apart to expose his beating heart.

He hears Mikyung sniffle. “Are you crying?” he whispers.

Mikyung laughs wetly. “A little bit,” she admits. “I just wish I could hug you right now. I hate this.”

Sehun hates this too. Hearing each other suffering over the phone and unable to be together is truly the worst. 

Mikyung speaks again. "Are you really sure you want to move?"

“Yes," Sehun says shakily. "If you want me there, I want to."

“I want you here so much. Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry for upsetting you. You really should have come down and told me this in person.”

She's right, he should have. He just hadn't realised this was going to be so emotional for both of them. “I’ll come visit you really soon," he says. "Next time I have three days off, I promise."

“I’ll put you down for a second,” Mikyung tells him. When she returns thirty seconds later, she requests a video call. Sehun accepts it and the screen changes from the still-picture and into a video. She’s smiling on camera, hair sticking everywhere and a coffee cup in her hand. She’s in her pajamas and Sehun's heart finally starts to calm down as he sees her smile at him.

"Let's talk more about this when you next come down," Mikyung says, and Sehun nods his agreement. Mikyung changes the subject, telling him all about an old surfing documentary called _Endless Summer_ Yoochun lent her on videotape. According to her, they need to watch it together when he comes down, because "it's from the 1960's and I know we weren't even born for like another 30 years but it makes me feel all nostalgic like I was really there, you have to see it!" As she chatters on, the chains around Sehun's chest slowly begin to loosen. When he can trust his voice again, he tells her about Jongin’s new zookeeper girlfriend, and how he’s going to meet her for the first time tomorrow, because Jongin is making him to go to the zoo with him to volunteer for Children’s Day. Mikyung teases him about never being able to say no to Jongin, which makes Sehun pout and whine a little. Then she tells him about the newest article she’s working on. It has been more than an hour when a notification lets him know he only has ten percent battery left on his phone.

“My battery’s going to die,” he says. Mikyung scrunches her face up sadly, then blows him a kiss through the phone.

“I love you,” she says.

Sehun presses two fingers against his lips and sends a kiss back. “I love you more,” he says. Mikyung continues waving until Sehun hangs up. He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. That was a lot more traumatic than he'd expected, but Mikyung wants him there, and he’s really going to do it. He gets up and starts to walk back towards his apartment complex. The wind has gotten stronger, but he's glad for it, because it seems to blow away some of the residual anxiety from getting worked up.

He's only just made it through the door when his phone rings again, the hospital this time.

“On-call dermatologist, Oh Sehun speaking,” he answers. The doctor on the other end introduces herself as Lee Eunsook from the intensive care unit. They have a patient with high fever and severe headache admitted to the ICU and the patient has now developed a rash. Sehun's phone only has seven percent battery left now, but he shoves it in his pocket anyway and hurries down to take the subway the couple of stops to the hospital.

When he enters the ICU, he’s immediately greeted by a nurse. “Are you the dermatologist?” she asks. Sehun nods, and the nurse raises an eyebrow. “Follow me. You might want to close your coat.” Sehun’s cheeks heat up, realising he’s only wearing ripped jeans and a printed anime t-shirt beneath his open white coat, the juvenile design clearly visible. He hurriedly buttons his coat as he follows the nurse to the patient's tiny room within the unit. 

Another nurse and a doctor stand around the patient’s bed. The doctor, who Sehun assumes is Lee Eunsook, is injecting ibuprofen into an IV line. When she’s done she hands the syringe to the nurse and turns to greet him, peeling her gloves off as she gives him the history. 

“Kim Hyeop, twenty-one years old, admitted with high fever and severe headaches after he returned from the USA a couple of weeks ago. First assumed to be influenza, but it has gotten progressively worse which is why he was transferred to us. The rash was noticed about an hour ago.” She lifts the blanket to reveal the patient's ankles and lower legs, which are covered with small, symmetrical red spots. Sehun walks around the bed and takes a look at the patient’s face. It doesn’t show any rash, at least not yet. He scans whatever skin he can see without lifting the covers, and finds the rash on the wrists and forearms as well. Definitely not influenza.

“Does it itch?” he asks.

Both Eunsook and Hyeop tell him no at the same time. Sehun presses his lips together thoughtfully and turns around to grab a pair of gloves. He’s sure he’s seen this somewhere before, and it’s not just something he read in a textbook when he was a medical student. He racks his brain for the memory.

“Where did you visit when you were in the USA?” he asks the patient as he gently lifts his arm to inspect the rash more closely. Hyeop groans but turns his head to look at Sehun. 

“Roadtrip…” he says and closes his eyes. “We went hiking...” 

Hiking. Sehun has a lightbulb moment. He saw this same rash when he was studying and working in the USA six years ago. It has the same pattern of starting on the ankles and wrists and moving up or down from there.

“Did you go to the southeastern states?” he asks Hyeop, and Eunsook looks at him sharply, obviously seeing that he has an idea. Hyeop opens his eyes again, looking a little confused. “Arkansas? Missouri? Tennessee?” The last one spikes a memory in Hyeop and he nods, and Sehun is now confident in his diagnosis. 

“It looks like Rocky Mountain spotted fever to me,” he tells Eunsook. It makes perfect sense when considered with the history and clinical signs. The illness is transmitted by tick bites endemic to the area Hyeop has been hiking in.

“How sure are you?” Eunsook asks. Sehun shrugs. He's pretty sure, but he won't guarantee it without serology.

“Infectious and tropical diseases will be able to help you more than I can,” he tells her. Eunsook heaves a long-suffering sigh, and Sehun blinks. Calling a consult is the right thing to do in this situation, and he’s never heard anybody have this reaction to the infectious and tropical disease specialists. Eunsook notices his confusion and her face transforms into an apologetic smile.

“Sorry. My best friend is hiding up there.” This really doesn’t explain her reaction, so Sehun continues to stare at her until she elaborates. “She’s a little insufferable sometimes, but I love her. It’s a joke, don’t worry.” 

Sehun decides to take her word for it and turns back towards the patient. The rash is just like the one he’d seen back then, crawling up his body towards his torso. This illness can be fatal even in previously healthy people, but the American patient he'd seen had survived. Sehun hopes Hyeop will make it out of this alive as well. The young man has closed his eyes again, and Sehun turns to leave. As he exits Hyeop’s room, he sees the infectious diseases specialist arriving. Her doctor’s coat is open to reveal a tailored pinstriped suit, and her golden-blonde hair swishes in the air above her shoulders, framing a narrow-featured, beautiful face. She looks like she's just stepped out of a TV medical drama. Sehun feels his eyes go wide as she stops in front of him and smiles up at him. Her name tag reads Kim Gwiboon. 

“Are you the dermatologist who diagnosed Rocky Mountain spotted fever?” she asks. Her voice is oddly sharp, and her eyes gleam with intelligence. Sehun nods, and Gwiboon's smile grows wider, showing teeth. Sehun takes a step back. 

“Gwiboon, get in here!” Eunsook calls from Hyeop’s room, and Gwiboon stops raking him up and down with her eyes and disappears into the room. When Sehun turns to watch her go, mouth hanging a little open in his confusion, Eunsook gives him a sympathetic smile, then winks at him. 

Completely mystified by the whole interaction, Sehun beats a hasty retreat.

\---

Joonmyun gets to the larger of the lecture theatres on the ground floor of the hospital at 6.20, exactly ten minutes early. The heavy wooden double doors of the corridor entry have been propped open, and a young administrative staff member with his fringe covering half his face sits behind a plastic folding table just outside them with a tablet in front of him. The table also holds a couple of tall stacks of stapled printouts and a printed sign on a stand that reads _General Practitioners Education Session #4: Implementing the new cardiovascular risk assessment (CVRA) guidance_. The admin glances up from his tablet when Joonmyun approaches.

“Name and registration number, please,” he says, tapping the screen. 

“I’m a presenter, actually,” Joonmyun says. “Kim Joonmyun.” 

“Oh, sorry.” The admin loses interest visibly and gestures him through. Joonmyun picks up one of the stapled printouts from the table before he enters. His own slides are already on there, submitted a couple of days ago to the education coordinator, but there’ll be a couple of other presenters as well as himself and he wouldn't mind getting an idea of what they’ll be covering. 

Despite the fact that the presentation is due to start in less than ten minutes, there are only about five or six people already present, scattered throughout the tiered seats. Joonmyun hasn’t presented at an education session before, but he assumes that the majority of the attending GPs will arrive in the couple of minutes before the presentation is due to start. Being ten minutes early is a luxury not many doctors have time for. Joonmyun only managed it because his shift officially ended an hour ago, leaving him with not enough time to make going home and coming back again worth it. 

He takes a seat in the front row so that it’ll be easy for him to reach the low wooden speaking floor, vaguely noticing a technician setting up the projector and lectern, and flips the first page of his handout over. He’ll be presenting first, giving an overview of the new version of the cardiovascular risk assessment which has been recently released, and how it will affect referral and medication titration. He’ll be followed by an obstetrician, Dr. Lee Hongki, who will cover specific considerations for pregnant patients, then a paediatrician, Dr. Park Chanyeol, for considerations in children. Joonmyun glances through the other slides, noting that he doesn’t need to go in-depth over a couple of statistics for teenagers, as Dr. Park has covered that too.

More and more people are filtering into the lecture theatre as the time draws close to the start of the presentation, and the room goes from silent to filled with low murmurs as the arriving GPs find friends and greet each other. Joonmyun looks up from the papers as someone flops into the seat next to him.

“Hey, Joonmyun.” Jongdae’s voice sounds weary, and Joonmyun’s smile of greeting dies on his lips as he takes in Jongdae’s appearance. 

“Hi,” he replies, wondering whether he should say something. Looking tired isn’t exactly an uncommon situation in their profession, but he’s never seen Jongdae look like this. His face is pale and drawn, his hair flops limply over his forehead, and the shadows around his eyes are so dark they almost look bruised. He looks terrible.

While he hesitates, Jongdae sits forward and starts to flip through his printout with one hand, resting the stapled papers on his knees as he bends over them. The other goes up to his hair and twists into it, grabbing the strands and pulling steadily. Joonmyun suspects he’s trying to keep himself awake this way, though whether it’s conscious or instinctive he’s not sure.

“You know this session is aimed at GPs, right?” Joonmyun asks. “It won’t be covering anything you’re not already aware of.” He leaves unsaid the real reason he’s saying this; that Jongdae might be better off taking a nap rather than attending this education session. 

Jongdae doesn’t look up from his papers. He’s flipped over to the slides for the presentations in pregnancy, and Joonmyun sees him blink hard, several times, as he stares down at them.

“Actually, I’m here to present this,” Jongdae says, tapping the papers on his knees. “Hongki has laryngitis. Completely lost his voice, there’s no way he can do it.”

“Ouch,” Joonmyun says, though it’s more out of concern for Jongdae than for Dr. Lee. Having to give an unexpected presentation is never fun. “Did you get time to prepare?”

Jongdae gives a strained laugh. “I only found out a couple of hours ago, and I was so busy with patients I haven’t even looked through the material yet.” He lets out a slightly shaky breath. “I’m not great with public speaking at the best of times. This is probably going to be a disaster.”

“You’ll be fine,” Joonmyun says as encouragingly as he can, but Jongdae doesn’t respond to this. Perhaps he didn’t even hear him. His lips move silently as he stares at the papers on his knees, and he’s practically radiating stress. Joonmyun checks his watch. There’s only a couple of minutes now until the session is supposed to start, but at least Jongdae is speaking second. Hopefully he’ll be able to prepare himself a little more while Joonmyun is speaking.

He glances up as a tall, broad-shouldered man stops in front of them, casting a faint shadow over them. “Jongdae, what are you doing here?” the newcomer asks bluntly. “You’re not speaking, are you?”

“I am now,” Jongdae says abruptly, not looking up, and Joonmyun winces a little. He knows Jongdae is exhausted and stressed out, and that the last thing he’d want is to come across as rude, but the other doctor won’t know that. He quickly reads his I.D. tag and finds that it’s Park Chanyeol, the paediatrician who will be speaking last. 

“I’m Kim Joonmyun,” he says, standing up and offering his hand. “Cardiothoracic surgery.”

Park Chanyeol smiles dazzlingly at him, shaking his hand as he introduces himself in return and takes the seat on the other side of Joonmyun, stretching a pair of long, denim-clad legs out in front of him. Joonmyun leans towards Chanyeol and lowers his voice. “Dr. Kim is a little stressed because he was thrown into this at the last minute,” he says quietly. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Ah.” Chanyeol sends a worried glance across Joonmyun at Jongdae, who is now kneading his forehead with his knuckles, shoulders tight with tension as he keeps reading his material. “Thanks for explaining, but Jongdae’s a good friend of mine, I wasn’t offended.”

Joonmyun is relieved to hear that, but it’s tempered by his own concern for Jongdae. There’s no time to say anything else, as the lecture theatre has now filled. The facilitator takes the lectern and gives a brief welcome, explains to the GPs present how to claim the continuing education credits they’ll get for attending, and introduces Joonmyun as the first speaker. 

Joonmyun stands up and crosses the strip of floor space between the tiered seats and the low wooden speaking platform. He’s not a naturally outgoing person, but he’s not nervous in front of crowds either, and he’s confident in his knowledge, so the presentation comes easily to him. It’s not complex, just an update to the older risk assessment to take into account new guidance, and only lasts around ten minutes. At the end of his presentation he invites questions, and there are only two, which he answers easily. The facilitator nods at him from the side of the room, so Joonmyun heads back to his seat among the rustling noise of sixty people flipping their pages over. 

The facilitator is already introducing Jongdae as Joonmyun gets back to his seat, mentioning that there’s been a last-minute speaker change, which Joonmyun appreciates. Hopefully that will take away some of the pressure to deliver a perfect presentation. Jongdae stands up and immediately stumbles, knees seeming to buckle and make him pitch a step forward. Joonmyun grabs his elbow to steady him with a flash of alarm. “Careful,” he says, searching Jongdae’s face. His pupils are dilated right out, almost eclipsing the brown in his eyes, but that could just be stress. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just a bit tired.” Jongdae rubs his eyes and turns towards the platform, and Joonmyun is forced to let him go. When he turns to his seat he notices Chanyeol watching Jongdae too, forehead creased worriedly. He sits down just as Jongdae gets to the lectern, clears his throat, and introduces himself. His eyes stay fixed on the laptop screen on the lectern rather than looking out at the audience.

Chanyeol leans over to murmur into his ear. “What happened?”

“He just stumbled, I think,” Joonmyun whispers back, but he’s uneasy as he watches Jongdae flick to the first slide and start talking. “Is he usually that pale?”

“No,” Chanyeol says, and he sounds as worried as Joonmyun feels.

The first half of Jongdae’s presentation goes fine, but about five minutes into the ten-minute slot, his voice starts to audibly shake, and Joonmyun's heart sinks. Before long Jongdae’s sentences are getting broken as he pauses mid-sentence to gasp in a breath. Joonmyun can see his hands trembling even from where he’s sitting. He’ll hyperventilate if he keeps that up, Joonmyun thinks worriedly. He stops hearing what Jongdae is actually saying, only able to focus on willing him to get through the presentation without falling apart. Beside him Chanyeol is leaning forward in his seat, fists clenching, looking like he wants to leap up and drag Jongdae off the platform.

Joonmyun bites his lip as Jongdae has to take yet another break mid-sentence, gripping the lectern like it’s holding him up. “Sorry,” he apologizes shakily, and Joonmyun feels the second-hand humiliation of it acutely. It's so hard to witness this. Jongdae sounds like he’s about to cry, and only the fact that it’s his last slide stops Joonmyun from trying to catch the facilitator’s attention and get him to break the presentation off.

There’s a collective sigh of relief when Jongdae finishes, and the applause is loud and long, showing the audience’s sympathy, but Joonmyun suspects that’s beyond Jongdae’s ability to appreciate right now. Instead of coming back to his seat, Jongdae walks over to the doors and pushes his way out of the lecture theatre. Chanyeol leaps to his feet and takes a step in the same direction, only to freeze in place as he realizes the facilitator is introducing him now. Joonmyun sees the conflict play across the paediatrician’s face. He stands up and touches Chanyeol’s arm.

“I’ll go check on him,” he says. Chanyeol throws him a look of intense gratitude before turning to step onto the platform. 

Joonmyun slips out of the doors and into the hall. It’s empty, though there’s still noise filtering through from the entrance hall further up. He looks both ways, wondering where Jongdae vanished off to so quickly. He turns to the admin, who has stacked the leftover handouts on the floor and is now folding the table up. 

“Did you see which way Dr. Kim went?” he asks.

“The guy who just came out?” The admin flips his fringe off the side of his face and points. “That way. He went into the emergency stairwell, I think.”

Joonmyun thanks him and hurries down the corridor, his concern spiking as he pushes the heavy fire door open and steps through into the chilly stairwell. It’s lit with white wall lights that somehow manage to be dim and harsh at the same time. Joonmyun glances both down and up, but he can’t see any sign of Jongdae, nor hear the sound of footsteps, which would surely echo if anyone was climbing the concrete stairs. 

“Jongdae?” he calls, but although he waits a few moments, there’s no reply. Doubt mixes in with his concern. Could the admin have seen wrong? But there’s nowhere else Jongdae could realistically have gone. There wasn’t time for him to get all the way to the end of the corridor and around the corner into the meeting room area without Joonmyun seeing him, not even if he’d been running. He must be here somewhere. He calls Jongdae’s name again, louder this time, and his voice echoes, but there’s still no reply.

Would he have gone up or down? Joonmyun thinks of how exhausted Jongdae looked and decides he probably wouldn’t have voluntarily climbed stairs in that condition, so he heads down towards the first basement level. His footsteps echo as he jogs down the concrete steps and turns on the first half-level landing. 

There's a motionless figure lying up the bottom few steps just before the lower landing. Joonmyun's heart seizes. Visions of Jongdae passing out and falling down the hard concrete steps flash before him as he runs down the last couple of steps, pulling his phone from his pocket in case he needs to call an emergency team. He crouches on the concrete landing next to Jongdae and does a rapid visual assessment for blood or any other injury. He can’t see anything obvious, so he puts his hands carefully on Jongdae’s shoulders. 

“Jongdae,” he says firmly. “Wake up.”

Jongdae opens his eyes. He looks dazed, and immediately tries to sit up, but Joonmyun holds him down by the shoulders. It's a good sign that it was so easy to wake him, but he doesn’t want Jongdae moving if he’s fallen down these steps, not until he’s sure there’s no spinal injury. At the feeling of being held down, Jongdae’s eyes widen in panic and lock onto Joonmyun's face.

“Whoa,” he gasps. “What’s going on?” 

“You tell me,” Joonmyun says calmly, still hiding his worry. “Did you faint? Do you remember if you fell?”

Jongdae stares up at him for a second. 

“No, I didn’t fall,” he says. “I just sat down...I think I just fell asleep.” 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Jongdae sounds confident, so Joonmyun lets him sit up. The shock is fading from his face, leaving him even more drawn and pale than before, but he doesn’t look unsteady, so Joonmyun gets off his knees with a slight grimace and sits on the bottom step next to Jongdae, turning to face him. “You fell asleep? Here?”

Jongdae looks away. “You know what it’s like sometimes,” he mumbles. “Don’t tell me you never fell asleep somewhere stupid.”

Joonmyun remembers the time he fell asleep standing up, leaning against the wall in the OR. But that was when he was a junior resident, still learning to cope with the workload. Jongdae is younger than him, but he’s still an attending surgeon. He shouldn’t be working in this condition. It’s actually unsafe, not only for Jongdae, who could have fallen dangerously if he hadn’t been sitting on the bottom step, but for any patients he might be treating.

“How long has it been since you last slept?” he asks. Jongdae frowns down at his knees.

“It’s...Friday night, right?” Joonmyun nods, and Jongdae’s lips move silently as he counts back. “I got a few hours in the call room on Wednesday morning, around three to six am, I think,” he says.

Joonmyun stares at him. “Jongdae...”

“Yeah, I know, that sounds bad,” Jongdae says. “We’ve been understaffed since the new year, and now Hongki is sick, so I’ve had to work several shifts in a row. I would have been home sleeping by now if I hadn’t had to give the presentation.” His face crumples, the memory of the disastrous presentation obviously just now hitting him, and he presses his face into his knees. Joonmyun puts his arm around Jongdae’s shoulders, heart aching for him.

“It was awful, wasn’t it?” Jongdae’s voice is a little muffled. “Actually don’t bother answering that. I know it was awful.” 

Joonmyun sighs. There’s no point in trying to deny that the presentation was painful. Jongdae isn’t stupid. “You got through all the material,” he says. “You covered everything they needed to know.” Jongdae’s head moves as he nods, but Joonmyun knows it’s a small comfort.

“I hate public speaking,” Jongdae whispers. He turns his head and rests the side of his face on his knees to look at Joonmyun through eyes that are dull with fatigue. “I don’t know why it happens, but my voice starts shaking, and it makes me panic because it sounds like I’m about to burst into tears, even though I’m not. Then it’s a vicious cycle because the panic makes the shaking worse and they feed into each other. It was even worse today because I didn’t get a chance to practice.”

“It’s pretty unfair that you were put in that position,” Joonmyun says. “Especially on three hours of sleep in three days. Wasn’t there anyone else who could have done it?”

Jongdae sighs, eyes drooping closed. “The residents are just as stressed as I am. Why should I make them do it?”

Joonmyun winces. This is a difficult one. He could tell Jongdae that as an attending, he has the right to delegate this kind of thing to his juniors, but he knows Jongdae isn’t that kind of person.

“Jongdae, I know you take responsibility for things and see them through, which is an admirable quality,” he tries, “but it’s not healthy to get this exhausted. You shouldn’t be at the point of falling asleep on a concrete stairwell. If you’d fallen it could’ve been dangerous, and it’s really cold in here too. If I hadn’t followed you, you might have spent hours here before anyone found you.”

Jongdae doesn’t say anything to this, just sits motionless under Joonmyun’s arm with his head on his knees and his eyes closed. Joonmyun chews his lip anxiously, worrying that he’s overstepped the boundaries of their friendship and offended Jongdae, until he realizes that Jongdae isn’t ignoring him - he’s fallen asleep again. His heart sinks. This is really not good. There’s no point in trying to talk sense to Jongdae right now. He needs to get him somewhere safe so he can sleep.

“Jongdae,” he says gently, shaking Jongdae’s shoulders until his friend lifts his head off his knees, with the same dazed look in his eyes he had when Joonmyun woke him before. “You fell asleep again.”

“Oh...” Jongdae creases his forehead, then attempts a laugh. “Sorry. I really am tired. What were you saying?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Joonmyun says. “How are you getting home?”

“Subway,” Jongdae says, and pushes his hands on his knees to stand up. Joonmyun stands up too, a hand hovering unobtrusively at Jongdae’s elbow in case he shows any signs of unsteadiness.

“I have my car. I’ll give you a ride home,” he says.

“What? No, don’t worry,” Jongdae says, shaking his head as they climb back up to the ground floor level. “I’m sure it’s out of your way.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Joonmyun says. “I don’t feel happy about you taking the subway home in this condition. Besides, how are you going to stay awake to get off at your stop? You’ll probably end up circling the city all night.” He smiles at Jongdae, keeping his voice light, and is relieved when Jongdae laughs.

“I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right,” he says. “Thanks, Joonmyun. And thanks for coming to wake me up, too. I would have been pretty sore tomorrow if I’d spent the night in the stairwell.”

Joonmyun walks beside Jongdae as they head up to the obstetrics and gynaecology floor so he can collect his belongings. He could just wait in the foyer, but he doesn’t trust Jongdae not to fall asleep again if he leaves him to go alone, and he can’t forget the way he stumbled when he got up in the lecture theatre. It’s rare to actually pass out from sleep deprivation, but if anyone is a candidate for doing so right now, it’s Jongdae. 

Thankfully they make it up to the ob-gyn floor without incident. Joonmyun hovers in Jongdae’s office while he changes his white coat for an outdoor jacket and shoves a few things from his desk into a backpack. Jongdae has a series of posters on his wall showing the different stages of a developing fetus, and Joonmyun smiles a little as he remembers coming here with Yejin, while she was still pregnant with Yejoon. That reminds him to send a quick message to his wife that he’ll be a little later home. Jongdae sticks his head into the staff lounge to say goodbye to the resident taking the night shift, and Joonmyun manages to drag him out again before they get too involved in a discussion about a patient they’re keeping for overnight observation.

“Dr. Kim has somewhere to be,” he says politely but firmly to the resident, and takes Jongdae’s elbow to lead him away. Jongdae blinks at him, looking puzzled, and Joonmyun has to laugh.

“You have an important appointment with your bed,” he teases. “Your resident will be fine.”

“You must think I’m completely incapable of taking care of myself,” Jongdae says ruefully. “I’m not usually like this, honestly.”

“I know,” Joonmyun says. “Don’t worry about it.”

He tries to keep Jongdae awake in the car with conversation, but gives up when his head drops forward and he falls asleep mid-sentence. He turns the radio on to keep himself company until he gets to Jongdae's apartment in Eunpyong-gu, where he wakes his friend up for the third time this hour.

“Come up for a coffee or something,” Jongdae invites, his voice a little slurred by sleep. “The kids will be in bed by now.”

Joonmyun accepts the invitation, happy to have an excuse to accompany Jongdae up to his floor and make sure he doesn’t end up falling asleep in the elevator or something. Jongdae’s eyes are trying to close all the way up and Joonmyun ends up actually having to take his friend’s arm by the time they get to their floor, because Jongdae appears incapable of walking in a straight line. Jongdae gets his apartment door open, stumbles over the door step, then a second later trips over a set of children’s trainers that have escaped their place on the shoe rack, saved only by the fact that Joonmyun is still holding his elbow. They both start to laugh.

“This is ridiculous,” Jongdae says. “I think I’m setting a new personal record for sleep deprivation. What’s the stage where you start hallucinating? Actually, don’t tell me. I think I’ve reached it. There’s a procession of unicorns on their way from the kitchen to the bathroom.”

“No, those are actually there,” Joonmyun tells him dryly, eyeing the line of toy animals winding their way down the hall. “Which of the kids collects unicorns?”

“Bodeul.” Jongdae toes his shoes off and leads Joonmyun into the house. “They’re his favourite animal. Or mythical creature, I suppose. Ahreum?”

Joonmyun smiles as Jongdae’s wife looks up and sees them both. She’s been reading a book on the sofa and now she stands up, closing it and smiling. If she’s taken aback at having a surprise guest this late at night, she doesn’t show it.

“This is one of my colleagues, Kim Joonmyun,” Jongdae says. He sways and Joonmyun grabs his elbow again. “I told you about him - at least I think I did? He’s bringing his wife and baby to the zoo with us tomorrow.”

“You did,” Ahreum assures her husband as she comes forward. She’s smiling at Joonmyun pleasantly, but there’s worry in her eyes as she looks at Jongdae. “Lovely to meet you, Joonmyun. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, coffee, fruit juice?”

“I'm fine, thanks,” Joonmyun says, and cautiously lets go of Jongdae's arm. They both watch him wander over to the couch and collapse onto it, closing his eyes. “I really only came up to make sure Jongdae made it home okay.”

Ahreum’s face fills with worry as she looks between her husband, who has apparently just passed out on the couch, and Joonmyun. “Is he unwell?”

“He told me he’s only had three hours’ sleep over the last three days,” Joonmyun says. “He’s exhausted, obviously, but he’ll be okay after some sleep.”

Ahreum looks torn between going to her husband and talking to Joonmyun, but after a couple of seconds she walks towards the kitchen, beckoning him to follow. 

“Are you in ob-gyn too?” she asks hopefully when they’re out of earshot - though honestly Joonmyun thinks Jongdae is way beyond the point of listening.

“No,” Joonmyun says. “I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon, but I do often work with Jongdae on cardio-obstetrics cases.”

“I think there’s something going on in his department,” Ahreum says. She leans against the counter, arms wrapped around her as she looks at Joonmyun worriedly. “But he won’t tell me what. He’s gotten better at telling me when things are hard lately, but I feel like there’s still something he’s keeping from me, and the amount of hours they're making him do - it’s just insane. Do you know anything? I’m sorry to ask this of you, I really am,” she hurries to continue when Joonmyun shifts a little, feeling slightly uncomfortable about the idea of talking about Jongdae to his wife behind his back. “I wouldn’t normally, believe me. But I have no way of knowing when he won’t talk to me, and you’ve seen what state he’s in. It can’t be right, can it? Does your department work you this hard?”

Joonmyun shakes his head slowly. “No, not to this point,” he admits. “But I’m afraid I don’t know what’s going on, if there is anything. All I know is what Jongdae has told me; they’re short-staffed and one of the senior residents has laryngitis, which is making everything worse, of course. But I can’t imagine the chief of ob-gyn will let things go on like this much longer. They must be looking at hiring new staff soon.”

“They better,” Ahreum says, a little fiercely. “I hate this. It’s inhumane, working him this hard. I even tried suggesting he quit, he’s a good doctor and he could get a position somewhere else, but he wouldn’t hear of it, because he’s too worried about what would happen to the rest of his team. And honestly, I see his point, because at this stage it feels like he’s practically holding the department together single-handedly.”

“It does sound pretty bad,” Joonmyun murmurs, wishing he could be more helpful. What happens in the ob-gyn department really isn’t anything to do with cardiology, but Jongdae is his friend, one of the few Joonmyun has, and he hates to see him like this. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything else to tell you. But I’ll see if I can find out if they’re planning on hiring any new staff for ob-gyn. I’ll ask my chief, he might know.”

“I’d be so grateful for anything you could do,” Ahreum says, with a sigh. “Sorry to unload all this on you when we’ve only just met. And thank you so much for bringing him home.”

“It’s my pleasure, really,” Joonmyun assures her, and shakes his head when she offers him a drink again. “I’d better get home to my family. I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes,” Ahreum smiles. “Chorong has been so excited that there’s a baby coming. Bodeul just keeps asking if the zoo has unicorns.”

Joonmyun smiles at this, then confirms that they’re meeting at 1 pm at the zoo the next day, before leaving Ahreum to look after her husband.

\---

“Aren’t you finished yet?” Sehun asks, wriggling a little to try and get a more comfortable position on the sink bench. It’s impossible. The bench is too cold and hard and his ass is too bony. He opens his eyes and reflexively flinches back for about the sixth time, nearly banging the back of his head against the mirror behind him. Jongin's face is too close to his, eyes intensely focused as he paints Sehun's face.

Jongin has painted his own face already. He’s a lion, and he’s wearing a fluffy-maned lion hat he’s borrowed from his girlfriend. Sehun keeps opening his eyes even though they’re meant to be closed, because he can’t stop admiring Jongin’s face. Every line is absolutely perfect, and the golden base below the detail is beautifully graded. To Sehun it looks like a work of art, and he knows he doesn’t have a chance of matching it, but Jongin has assured him that it doesn’t matter. According to Jongin, Sehun’s moral support is worth more than his art skills and kids aren’t discerning when it comes to being face-painted. Sehun hopes his best friend is right about that, because he’s pretty sure Jongin doesn’t really understand what Sehun means when he says he’s not good at art. 

He’s really, really not good at art.

“Will you please sit still?” Jongin asks with an exasperated huff. “You’re going to make me mess up.”

“It’s scary,” Sehun says, trying not to whine and failing dismally. “You’re going to poke my eye out.”

“I’m not going to poke your eye out, for goodness' sake,” Jongin sighs and places a firm hand on top of Sehun’s head in an attempt to hold him still. “At least, I’m not if you actually sit still. I can’t say what will happen if you keep wriggling.”

“I can’t help it, it tickles,” Sehun complains, squirming beneath Jongin’s hand as he feels the fine-tipped paintbrush swoop across his cheek. Jongin just clicks his tongue and grips Sehun’s head even harder, and Sehun makes a sincere attempt not to writhe as the paintbrush leaves a cold trail from the bridge of his nose up towards one temple. “Why do I have to get my face painted, anyway? I only said I’d be moral support. I never signed up for being decorated.”

“It’s to encourage the kids,” Jongin says, eyes narrowing as he focuses on some detail along Sehun’s cheekbone. 

“What kind of animal am I going to be, anyway?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise! Now close your eyes, I’m going to do your eyelids.”

Sehun obeys, trying to stop pouting. “You better not be putting any of that glitter on my face,” he says, remembering the supplies he’d seen in the face-painting kit.

“Would I do that to you?” Jongin asks, pretending to be wounded, but Sehun hears a strange note in his friend’s voice. It sounds rather like suppressed glee. 

“Yeah, you would,” he grumbles. “You’d coat me in pink sparkles from head to toe if you could, because you’re a troll.”

“No, you’re the troll,” Jongin says sweetly, dabbing something across Sehun’s eyelids. “One of those cute ones with colourful sticky-up hair.”

“Listen, the hair chalk was _your_ idea -” 

“You look beautiful,” Jongin interrupts him. “You’re like a miraculous rainbow. Now be a good boy and let me finish.”

“I hate you,” Sehun says, dismally.

When Jongin finally finishes with him, Sehun jumps off the uncomfortable sink bench with great relief, turns around and looks into the mirror. For several long moments, he stares at his reflection. Then he turns to Jongin and lets the emptiness in his eyes speak for him, because there are no words to describe how dead inside he feels right now.

Jongin starts giggling uncontrollably, and Sehun watches him, feeling like his soul has been sucked out of the top of his rainbow-coloured head. Jongin has turned him into a butterfly.

“S-sorry,” Jongin gasps through his laughter. “But you look so pretty!”

"You are officially demoted," Sehun says, “from best friend to worst friend.” He turns back to the mirror, but it’s no better on the second look. There's glitter. _Pink_ glitter. He supposes it would appeal to any little girl between the ages of perhaps five and twelve, but...

“If anyone I know sees me like this, I’m never going to talk to you again,” he says gloomily as Jongin finally controls his giggles and starts packing the sponges and brushes into the face-paint box so they can take them outside. 

“It really suits you,” Jongin assures him, still snickering a little as they leave the bathroom and head past the gift shop and cafe to the outdoor picnic area, where a bouncy castle is being inflated. 

Sehun sighs heavily, and resigns himself to an afternoon spent as - what did Jongin call him? A miraculous rainbow. At least Mikyung isn’t here. If she saw him looking like this, she’d never let him live it down. 

He helps Jongin set up the face-painting kits and Jongin pulls out a clearfile of animal face-painting designs he’s printed out. Sehun flips through them resignedly. 

“There’s no way I’m pulling these off,” he tells Jongin. “What’s the simplest of these?”

“Probably the tiger,” Jongin says, taking the clearfile from him and flipping the pages until he finds it. “You can just sponge the face orange, do black stripes around the edges, and a white muzzle and black nose.”

Sehun eyes the tiger design warily, then nods. “Fine. I’ll do tigers, and you do everything else.”

Jongin laughs, and then there’s a small family in front of them with two kids, a boy and a girl, and the face-painted mission is kicked off.

“You want to be a tiger, right?” Sehun says to the small boy standing in front of him, because he doesn’t want the kid getting any fancy ideas. The kid nods, a little uncertainly, true, but Sehun smirks in triumph at getting the agreement. A tiger it is. He takes a sponge-load of orange paint and smears it liberally around the boy’s face, then sits back and assesses the result. It looks rather streaky. He glances over at what Jongin is doing, and sees him dabbing his sponge firmly on the girl’s face, so he copies the technique. This works a lot better, and soon the boy’s small face is a solid bright orange. Sehun is very pleased with himself. He grabs a paintbrush and paints some black v-shaped stripes around the edge of the boy’s face. This is not as easy as it looked when Jongin was doing it. Sehun’s stripes are thick and somewhat wonky, but the overall impression is definitely tiger-ish. He adds a black blob for the nose and a few haphazard whiskers, then leans back to get a good look at his creation.

“Holy sh- uh, I mean, _wow_ , I’m not so bad at this,” he says, rather awed at his own genius. “Look, Jongin! A tiger!”

Jongin looks over and snorts. “Good job,” he says, voice wobbling a little. Sehun can tell his friend is really struggling not to collapse into hysterical giggles, but that doesn’t diminish Sehun’s pride at all. Okay, sure, the zebra face Jongin is doing on the little girl could probably be an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art, but Sehun thinks his first attempt at a tiger face would definitely make it to the door of his mom’s fridge. The kid seems happy enough when he peers in the small hand-mirror Sehun holds up, and runs back to his parents to growl at them, so Sehun beckons the next kid forward.

“So, you want to be a tiger, right?”

Confronted with Sehun’s determination, most of the kids let him paint them as a tiger, and the few that are especially stubborn about wanting something else Sehun sends to stand in Jongin’s line. He keeps glancing across at Jongin’s work, because everything he paints is just so beautiful. He thinks back to how anxious Jongin sounded when he’d begged Sehun over the phone to come volunteer for the Children’s Day festivities with him and shakes his head fondly. Jongin had nothing to worry about when it came to the art side of this gig, but Sehun had known that. He’d known it wasn’t Jongin’s skill he was worried about. It was because Jongin had always refused to let himself do anything related to art, because he’d given up on his dreams and it was too painful to touch them. He wouldn’t even so much as doodle in the margins of his notebooks for as long as Sehun had known him. The fact that Jongin is doing this now is a huge step forward, and it makes Sehun happy to see his friend smile as he paints his designs on the children’s faces. He wonders if Sohee knows how good she is for Jongin.

There’s a rather lot of small tigers running around the place now, interspersed with the other zoo animals, butterflies, and superheroes which are all courtesy of Jongin. Sehun is actually enjoying himself. His tigers might not be anything to write home about, but it’s fun making the kids happy, and he forgets that he’s here under protest, decorated as a butterfly. He forgets it right up until a familiar voice above them says, in a tone that’s half-surprise, half-amusement, “Oh Sehun, is that you?”

Sehun looks up from his latest tigerly masterpiece and nearly chokes on his own spit. Jongdae is standing in front of him, with the chief of the emergency department, Kim Minseok, whom he’d gotten to know better at Chanyeol’s party. The third man is familiar too, and dismay sinks through Sehun as he places him. It’s Kim Joonmyun, the cardiothoracic surgeon he pranked at Halloween. He’s been avoiding Dr. Kim ever since posting the video of the prank on the staff intranet.

“No, I’m a butterfly,” he blurts out before he can think better of it, then cringes as all three men start to laugh.

“So you are,” Jongdae says merrily. “And the lion is Jongin! What are you two doing here?”

“Face-painting,” Sehun says, barely managing not to tag on a sarcastic “obviously”. He feels the sudden urge to crawl underneath the bench he’s sitting on and never come out again. “Jongin made me do it.”

This elicits another round of laughter from Jongdae and Minseok, and Sehun is glad the face-paint is covering the blush he feels spreading across his face. Jongin looks up from the face he’s painting and smiles happily at them, apparently not embarrassed at all. Probably because he’s a lion and not a glittery butterfly with rainbow hair. 

“We’re volunteering,” Jongin says brightly, then smiles at the gaggle of children clustering around Jongdae and Minseok. “Would you like your faces painted?”

There’s a chorus of “yes please!”, and Sehun focuses on the half-finished tiger in front of him, haphazardly dashing off the black stripes and sending him away. 

“I only do tigers,” he announces loudly to the kids. “You want anything else, go see Jongin.”

Apparently none of Jongdae or Minseok’s kids want to be a tiger. They crowd around Jongin as he starts a cheetah on the tallest girl, and Sehun stands up to stretch his back, glad of the brief respite. 

“Do you do this regularly?” Minseok asks him as they wait for Jongin to finish painting the children. Sehun shakes his head.

“Jongin’s girlfriend works here and the regular face-painter couldn’t make it, so she roped Jongin in, and he made me come help. I think he wanted me for moral support more than my talent, though.”

“I’m assuming you’re responsible for all the tigers,” Jongdae says, grinning, and Sehun nods proudly. Just the fact that they’re recognizable as tigers is a win for him. 

“Jongin is really good,” Joonmyun says, and the other two agree as the tallest girl runs up to Minseok with a completed cheetah face, asking him to take her picture on his phone. Joonmyun has one hand on a stroller with a sleeping baby strapped into it, rocking it gently backwards and forwards. Sehun tries not to hunch his shoulders as the surgeon eyes him curiously. This is the problem with pranking people, he reminds himself for at least the thousandth time. It always comes back to bite you at some point. When is he ever going to learn? But Joonmyun still looks puzzled. Maybe it’s been long enough that he won’t place Sehun. At least not beneath the disguise of his butterfly face-paint.

This hope crashes into the dust at Sehun’s feet a few seconds later when Joonmyun visibly brightens. “Ah! You’re the one who nearly sent me into cardiac arrest on Halloween, right?”

Sehun cringes a little. “Yeah, that was me,” he admits, and is relieved when Joonmyun only smiles at him. 

“I thought you looked familiar under the butterfly,” he says. “I like your hair.”

“It washes out,” Sehun says, touching his rainbow glory self-consciously, and tries to change the subject. “Are any of this crowd yours?” He gestures at the children clustered around Jongin. Joonmyun shakes his head.

“The older two girls are Minseok’s and the rest are Jongdae’s. I just have baby Yejoon, here.” His face softens as he glances down at the sleeping baby in the stroller. 

“He’s cute,” Sehun says, which is a fairly obvious observation, he thinks, but Joonmyun beams at him like Sehun has just pronounced the kid a child genius. 

Minseok has been distracted by taking photos of the three older girls now that all their faces are finished, and Jongdae has sat down on the bench next to Jongin where Sehun had been sitting. He looks very tired, but he’s smiling as he watches Jongin paint a unicorn’s horn on the little boy’s forehead. There’s a curly-haired toddler wearing a chest harness clipped to a leash which is wrapped around Jongdae’s wrist, and she’s leaning against the straps and giggling as it makes her swing on her feet. Sehun finds himself wondering what it would be like to have kids. He finds it hard to imagine. He can barely look after himself, let alone a child. He wonders if Mikyung ever wants to have kids. It’s not something he’s ever really thought about before, and the idea makes him feel a little strange, but not in a bad way.

When the children all have their faces painted, the families regroup and head off to go around the zoo. Sehun takes his place next to Jongin again and gives a loud groan.

“Unbelievable,” he says. “My dignity among my colleagues has been ruined forever.”

Jongin glances at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I’m sure they thought you looked lovely. Jongdae’s little girl said she wanted to be a “butterfly like the pretty man”.”

Sehun flails in despair, making Jongin snicker. “Did I tell you I hate you?”

“You did,” Jongin grins. He grabs his phone and before Sehun has a chance to react, he snaps a picture of him, then crows with delight at the result. “You look fantastically grumpy! Now just let me send this to Mikyung -”

“Don’t you dare -" Sehun makes a lunge for Jongin’s phone and almost knocks the face-painting kit flying. He grabs it before it can fall on the ground and spread paint and glitter everywhere, but that’s all the time Jongin needs to send the message. He giggles triumphantly at Sehun’s betrayed expression.

“Jongin!” Sehun wails. “I was just getting her to think that I was all mature and responsible! You’ve ruined everything!”

“She deserves some ammunition, with all the pranks you play on her,” Jongin says, completely unremorseful. Sehun is about to retort that he hasn’t played a prank on Mikyung in _weeks_ , but Mikyung’s KaTalk alert on his phone distracts him, and he groans as Jongin claps his hands and cackles gleefully. He opens the message to find that Mikyung has sent him a wall of about fifty emojis crying tears of laughter.

“My girlfriend thinks I’m a laughing stock,” Sehun says, flopping backward against the bench dramatically. Mikyung messages him again and he glances at it, then shoves the phone at Jongin. “Look what you’ve done!”

Jongin reads Mikyung’s message ( _You better look like this next time you come down or I will be tragically disappointed_ ) and his face lights up. 

“I’ll do your face and hair again!” he exclaims, then gives a dramatic shriek of pain when Sehun punches his shoulder and tells him in no uncertain tones that Jongin will get close to Sehun’s face with a paintbrush again only over his dead body. The ensuing wrestling match is thwarted by the arrival of more children wanting their faces painted, and Sehun gets back to his task of increasing the tiger population of the zoo.


	26. May 12th

Minseok isn’t looking forward to this particular task. The door to his office is shut and the wall clock inexorably ticks the seconds into the quiet room. He’s in front of his computer, hoping to get a few emails answered, but the thought of what’s about to happen makes him restless and the words on his screen don’t really register no matter how many times he reads them over.

He looks up at the knock on his door. The HR representative gives him a quick smile as she enters. She’s here because he doesn’t want anybody to be able to claim he’s made a bad decision or that he’s been unfair. The rep sits at the small table in his office and Minseok reluctantly moves from his desk to the other chair, suddenly aware as he does so how untidy he looks. It’s not exactly out of the ordinary for Minseok, but it’s situations like this when being dressed smartly and not looking like he’s about to fly apart at the seems might lend him a little confidence. As it is, the sleeves of his doctor’s coat are rolled up and it hangs open around his navy scrubs, the ID clipped to his chest pocket has flipped around, and God knows what his hair looks like. If Kyungsoo saw him right now, he’d probably roll his eyes and threaten to hold him down and forcibly shave his head, military style.

Another knock sounds and both of them turn towards the doorway. Dr. Mae holds her head up high, as if she doesn’t know what’s about to happen, but Minseok can’t imagine that it will come as a great surprise after the warnings she's already had. He gestures towards the remaining chair around the table and Dr. Mae sits down and crosses her legs. She looks almost arrogant, and it irritates Minseok. Maybe it’s a defence mechanism, but she could at least show some humility.

“Mae Yoojung,” he starts and watches as her eyes widen a little as he drops her title. “This is not the first time we’ve talked. Last time we met, I sent you a written warning and gave you a last verbal warning. Unfortunately, things haven’t improved in the slightest. It has also come to my attention that pain medication has gone missing from the medicine room. We have you on the CCTV footage stealing NSAIDs. I’m terminating your contract effective immediately,” he says and looks towards the HR representative who is writing notes onto her notepad. Dr. Mae keeps awkwardly quiet.

“I’m fired?” she asks after a few seconds. Minseok nods and folds his hands in his lap.

“I won’t tolerate medical negligence and theft in my department.” He feels relieved now that the words have been said out loud. It's his job as chief of his department to make sure the practiced medicine is up to his standards and to educate willing and good doctors. He's given Dr. Mae many chances to change and improve, but with the medication theft, which she could actually be criminally charged with if they decided to take it that far, Minseok has reached the limit. So far it was only NSAIDs that had been taken, cheap and available over the counter, but he's well aware of the theft statistics of stronger, addictive drugs such as opioids by hospital staff, and it's a slippery slope once started. All things considered, he's relieved Dr. Mae is still a resident and won't be able to practice medicine independently. If she wants to continue with medicine, she'll have to apply for and be accepted into another university hospital's residency programme.

“You'll still be paid for the next month, but I don't want you to show up to work from today on," he tells her. "Please use the rest of the day to empty out your closet and your desk space with your personal belongings. If you need help moving anything, you can ask an orderly for help or bring someone in to help you another day."

The only sound in the office is the pen on paper. When that stops too, Minseok glances at the HR rep and she nods her approval. Dr. Mae looks down in her lap before she stands up.

“I understand.” Her voice has changed slightly. Instead of sounding arrogant, it sounds bitter. Minseok sort of understands. Being fired can’t be the most enjoyable experience, but he knows his decision is the right one. Minseok sees her out of his office, then turns back towards the rep. She smiles at him.

“Well done. I’ll make sure the paperwork is fixed within the next couple of hours,” she tells him and stands up. Minseok asks her to leave the door open as she leaves. The hallway is bustling and busy, but it takes some of the pressure out of the air in his silent office.

He moves back to sit in front of his computer, and again he’s staring at the list of emails without really reading them, but this time he feels better. Despite the unpleasantness of having to terminate an employee, Minseok finds that a weight has gone off his shoulders. It feels good to be decisive and assert himself. It has been a long time since he felt as confident as he does now. This time last year, he would’ve avoided the difficult situation and tried to fix everything with passive measures such as watching the medication room and observing her consultations rather than confront the problem head-on. He really must be getting better.

A new email notification pulls him back into his work. The chief of orthopaedics wants to meet with him to discuss some referral pathways from the ED to the fracture clinic. Minseok is about to accept the scheduled meeting when he’s distracted by a commotion in the hallway. He hurries to the source of the noise and finds a middle-aged man yelling at Aecha behind the triage desk. The head nurse sits tall in her chair as she calmly tries to reason with him, but she can barely get a word in edgeways.

“I want to speak to the manager!” the man shouts. Minseok clears his throat to gain his attention. The man turns towards him with fire in his eyes, but Minseok isn’t intimidated. The ED is a stressful place for most people, and he deals with anger born of fear, frustration and a myriad other situations rather often.

“I’m the chief doctor of the emergency department. What’s the problem here?” he asks. The man takes a deep breath.

“You damn lot are all incompetent as hell, is the problem! My wife is in pain and you just sent her home.” He points towards a woman sitting on a chair at the front of the waiting room, holding her side as she takes breaths which look difficult and painful.

“When did you visit us?” Minseok asks, turning his attention back to the husband. The man runs a hand through his hair and glares at Minseok.

“Last Saturday when she fell and hit her chest. The doctor barely looked at her, but she can’t even breathe properly!”

A full week ago. Minseok looks around him again and watches the woman lean forward, trying to make breathing easier. “I understand your concern. We’ll take another look at her in just a few minutes,” he tells the husband. The husband grumbles under his breath, but goes back to his wife without any further display of anger. Minseok turns around to face Aecha and leans over the reception desk. “Can you check who cared for her when she was here last Saturday?”

Aecha looks relieved by his intervention. She taps away on her computer, then sighs deeply before she gently turns her screen a little towards him. Minseok has to stand on his tiptoes and twist his upper body over the desk to look at it. The last note in her chart reads “Trauma to upper body in fall from stairs. Rib 5 fracture. Sent home with analgesia and agrees to seek medical treatment if symptoms persist or worsen” and it was written by Dr. Mae. Minseok nearly groans aloud. He’s already fired her, but the knock-on effect of her negligence continues. He decides to see the patient himself, rather than delegate to a resident. Dr. Mae was still his staff member, and it’s the least he can do to take responsibility for this situation.

Choi Yeeun tells Minseok that she fell down a few steps last Saturday and landed on her right side, chest hitting the edge of a step directly. She has a hard time breathing and she’s sore without Minseok even touching her. When he asks her to lift her arms, her eyes tear up with pain and she can't get her hands higher than her shoulders.

“I’m going to listen to your lungs,” he tells her and asks her to unbutton her shirt. She does so slowly, but Minseok uses the time to warm up his stethoscope with his hands. It’s always uncomfortable to get an ice cold stethoscope on skin. Her right lung crinkles in a way lungs aren’t supposed to when she struggles to take a deep breath and Minseok frowns.

“Did the doctor last Saturday get an X-ray of your chest?” he asks.

“No,” Yeeun says as she redoes her buttons. “She didn’t listen to my lungs like you're doing either.” Minseok has to struggle to keep the scowl off his face, reminding himself that he won’t have to deal with this blatant negligence anymore.

“I’d like to send you for an X-ray so we can check your lungs,” he tells Yeeun. “And after that, I’d like to get a blood sample from you as well. Do you think you can find your way to the radiology department on the first floor?” Yeeun and her husband both look overwhelmed with the idea of finding their way around, so Minseok continues before they have to answer. “It’s okay, I’ll find an orderly to take you. I’ll see you when you get back.”

He leaves the room to call radiology and find a computer to write the referral. Halfway through the phone call he becomes aware that Kim Songmi is hovering. It’s obvious that she wants him for something, so he sends her a quick nod to acknowledge her presence and turns to her once he’s hung up.

“Hi, chief,” she says, and Minseok blinks. Since the Christmas party, Songmi has made it a point to address him by his first name like she said she would, and now it feels odd to hear her call him by his title. “Can I get off an hour earlier today?”

Minseok is a little taken aback, but he doesn't think Songmi would ask unless it was important. “Sure, as long was we have enough people on the floor,” he says, and Songmi nods, assuring him that she’s already checked this with Aecha. “Is anything wrong? Something I can help with?” he asks.

Songmi hesitates. “Maybe...you’re friends with Yixing, so…” she starts, then shakes her head. “No, never mind. It’s nothing to worry about. Thank you for letting me off early.” She gives him a polite smile, then leaves him to confirm with Aecha.

Minseok watches her go, wondering what she isn’t telling him. The only thing he can think of is that Yixing might still be suffering from the after-effects of his injury and the resulting string of surgeries to try and stop him rebleeding. It’s been two months now, but the haemophilia could be complicating his recovery. Songmi said it was nothing to worry about, but she wouldn’t have mentioned her husband like that for no reason, and Minseok knows he won’t be able to relax now until he’s checked on his friend. It’s too long since he last talked to Yixing anyway, maybe they can catch up for lunch or dinner. He’s about to find his phone and message his friend to that effect when his pager starts beeping and a seizing patient rolls into his department. Minseok files a mental note so he can remember later and goes to deal with the emergency.

Thirty minutes later, the seizing patient has been stabilized and Choi Yeeun and her husband return to the emergency department. Minseok looks through the X-rays and lab results and hides his internal grimace.

“You have a fractured rib, right here,” he tells Yeeun as he puts the X-ray up on the lightboard for them to look at, tapping the area where the displaced fracture of the 5th rib is blatantly obvious to him, though perhaps not to the untrained eye. Yeeun nods, but this isn’t news to her. Dr. Mae had, at least, told her she probably had a fracture. “The bone end has poked a small hole in your right lung, which caused blood to enter and slowly build up inside your lung. That’s what is making it so hard for you to breathe. The best way to treat this is to insert a tube into your lung and drain the fluid. That will make it easier to breathe. I'm also going to ask the orthopaedic surgeon to come talk to you because the rib will need surgical fixing.”

“How long before her rib heals?” Yeeun’s husband still sounds a little angry, a little apprehensive about the competence of the ED personnel perhaps, but Minseok understands. He would be too, if someone he cared about had gotten badly injured and dismissed at the emergency department. The thought of Nayoung getting hurt during soccer and being dismissed actually makes him a little moody.

“Fractured ribs usually take six to eight weeks to heal. For now, I’m going to admit you to the hospital for chest tube drainage,” he explains. Yeeun sighs, and Minseok feels bad for her as she closes her eyes. He turns his attention to writing his notes in her chart, glad once again that he’s dealt with Dr. Mae. Having things like this happen in his department, under his responsibility, is just not acceptable.

Around lunchtime he’s caught by Aecha, who reminds him yet again to take a break, get some food and talk to someone that isn't a patient. Minseok stands reluctantly in front of the nurses station as she makes fond shooing motions at him, trying not to look as much like a lost child as he feels. He doesn’t want to leave the department, he wants to stay here where he's safe and comfortable. Then he remembers the mental note he made earlier after speaking to Songmi and decides to see if he can find Yixing. It might be nothing at all, but either way, it will still be nice to see his friend.

He takes the staff elevator to the ninth floor and enters the oncology ward to find Yixing just shutting his door to his office. Yixing looks startled when he sees him, before his face relaxes into his sweet, dimpled smile.

“What are you doing up here, Minseok?” he asks.

Minseok sends his friend a smile. “Want to have lunch with me?”

Yixing’s face lights up. “Are you sure you won’t be whisked away to an emergency?”

“When can I ever be sure of that? Come on, the more time we spend talking, the less chance I have of actually getting something to eat.”

Yixing laughs and pats his shoulder affectionately before he starts walking back towards the elevators. Minseok follows him. He doubts Aecha will let anything but an extreme emergency interrupt him. She’s been very persistent about the responsibility he gave her of making sure he gets his breaks. They get to the staff cafeteria on the fourteenth floor, where Yixing orders dumplings and Minseok gets a roll of kimbap.

“How are you?” he asks when they’re sitting down at a table. “It’s been a while since we last talked.” He takes a bite of his kimbap and looks up at Yixing from beneath his fringe. Yixing seems to be playing with his food instead of actually eating anything.

“Okay, I guess,” he says, and Minseok puts his food down. He knows he hasn’t been the best of friends over the past few years. It hasn’t only been his former marriage that suffered from his work addiction and the cause of it, but now that he’s finally learning in therapy how to overcome all that, he wants to extend the better person he's becoming to all of his friends too.

“Something on your mind?” he asks.

Yixing nods slowly. “There’s been a lot on my mind since the accident,” he says.

“Are you having any trouble with your injury?” Minseok asks.

Yixing smiles a little, shaking his head. “No, physically I’m fine now. It just got me thinking a lot about things I hadn't really considered before."

Minseok nods understandingly. “Traumatic events can be like that. I also got thrown off when…” he grinds to a halt as he realises what he's saying. He has never told anyone but Yifan about Ilsung’s death. Reliving it within the safe space of a therapist’s office is one thing, but talking about it with friends is a different thing entirely, and Minseok isn't ready. He can’t do it. Can't risk it.

Yixing pats his hand. “Hey, you need to finish eating before you get paged,” he says, then changes the subject to a medical documentary he'd watched about trauma cases in a Johannesburg hospital, and the previous topic of conversation is over. Minseok listens with interest to Yixing describe the documentary, as the South African hospital is famous for seeing one of the highest rates of gunshot wounds in the world, but he can sense Yixing's underlying depression the more he talks to him. He wants to do something to help, but he doesn't know how. He gets through his entire lunch without getting paged and it’s Yixing who has to leave first, smiling apologetically as he stands up.

“Hey, Yixing,” Minseok says quickly before he can leave. “Want to grab a beer after work sometime soon?”

Yixing looks a little startled again, just like he'd looked when Minseok had appeared on the oncology floor and asked him for lunch, and it makes a twinge of guilt in Minseok's chest. He really has been neglecting his friends, not just his family, he thinks regretfully as Yixing smiles and asks Minseok to text him when he's free.

\---

Baekhyun’s steps unconsciously start to slow as he walks next to Chanyeol towards the main doors of the hospital entrance. He looks up at the huge building towering above him and feels miniscule, ant-like, like the whole thing is a giant foot that could come down at any moment to squash him flat. He’s been away from work for three months. It feels like so long that he wonders if he can even remember how to do his job, let alone handle all the stress that comes with working in a hospital.

He’s gotten so much better, everyone says so, and Baekhyun knows they’re right. He knows it by the way his interests have come back, the way he cares what other people are doing again, the way smiles break spontaneously across his face and jokes trip from his tongue. The antidepressants have given him back his will to live, and he’s working on his thought processes and the emotional dependency he hadn’t known he had on Nari in his weekly psychotherapy sessions. The shadows have not whispered to him in months, but his illness has left him less sure of himself, less confident than he used to be. He knows, now, how terrifyingly easy it is for a mind to break.

The last time he was in the hospital was the day Chanyeol and Jongdae found him and saved his life. He doesn’t really remember much of his admission, nor the days that followed. Baekhyun had thought he’d been broken beyond all hope of repair, but he’d been wrong. He was just hurt, and now he’s healing. It’s sobering to think of how he’d been so ready to die, yet now he’s so ready to live. He wonders now how many people who succeeded in their deaths might have been able to live, too, if they’d only been dragged back from the brink and supported the way he’s been lucky enough to have been.

“Baekhyun? You okay?” Chanyeol has noticed his slowing pace and slows his own to match it.

“Yeah, fine,” Baekhyun says quickly, not wanting to worry Chanyeol. He’s done enough worrying Chanyeol to last a lifetime. “Just a bit nervous.”

Chanyeol reaches out, and it’s only when he gently takes Baekhyun’s hand that he realises he’s clenching them both into tight, anxious fists against his chest. He laughs, embarrassed, but he doesn’t pull away. There’s something very comforting about Chanyeol’s large hand wrapping around his.

“You’ll be fine,” Chanyeol tells him. “You’re ready for this. You’ve done so well, Baekhyun.” His eyes seem to shine as he smiles. “I’m really proud of you.”

“Aww,” Baekhyun says, tilting his head to one side teasingly. “So sweet, Chanyeol! You’re warming the cockles of my heart.”

Chanyeol laughs, and it’s his laugh, more than anything else, that really makes Baekhyun’s heart feel warm. Making people laugh was an important part of who Baekhyun was before, and it reminds him that he exists, now. He’s here. He’s real.

Chanyeol offers to come up to the plastic surgery floor with Baekhyun, but Baekhyun shakes his head. “It’s fine. I need to stand on my own feet again.” Not to mention that literally having his hand held as he enters his department would make him feel like he was being taken to his first day of kindergarten.

Chanyeol beams at him. “Okay. I’ll come and get you for lunch,” he says, and waves happily as he gets out of the elevator on the paediatric floor. Baekhyun rises the next few floors to the plastic surgery floor alone. He clings to the confidence and happiness he feels with Chanyeol, trying to ignore the way his stomach twists. There’s no reason to be nervous. His team are all good people, and nobody is going to be prejudiced about mental illness, and if they are they aren’t worth Baekhyun’s time. His workload won’t be too much at first, because Chief Seo is keeping the plastic surgeon she has on loan from another hospital for an extra two weeks so that they can gradually transfer the cases.

Baekhyun hasn’t met the loaned surgeon yet, and curiosity mixes with his nerves. He quickly checks his appearance in the mirrored back wall of the elevator, making sure his hair is neat and his shirt collar folded tidily over the neck of his sweater. He’s still rather too thin, but not emaciated like he had been at his worst, and the old sparkle is back in his eyes again. He looks as much better as everyone says, and it’s both reassuring and encouraging.

The lift deposits him on the plastic surgery floor. It looks just the same as always, sounds the same, smells the same, and it’s almost like the last three months have vanished into dust. Baekhyun approaches the nursing station. The nurse there, Haeri, stands up when she sees him, her face lighting up.

“Dr. Byun, welcome back!”

“Thank you,” Baekhyun smiles, his heart lightening in his chest as he realises just how good it is to see her again. Another couple of nurses appear from seemingly nowhere to echo the greeting, seeming as glad to see him as Haeri, and Baekhyun feels his eyes scrunch right up into happy crescents as he smiles back. “It’s good to be back.”

“Baekhyun!” a familiar male voice says, and Baekhyun looks around just in time to be gripped in a strong one-armed hug.

“Jin,” he grins as the older resident lets him go and steps back. “I hope you’ve been behaving in the OR while I’ve been away, you little rascal."

Jin laughs, the sound ringing bright and strong in the corridor. “You may be my _sunbae_ , but I’m still older than you, kiddo,” he retorts. Baekhyun laughs too, and it feels like he’s rising like the sun. Everyone’s smiling at him, nobody’s treating him like he’s going to break, and for the first time Baekhyun really feels that there’s solid ground beneath his feet again.

Chief Seo turns up to welcome him too, and the nurses and residents scatter back to their respective duties. She walks with him down the corridor, where the door to his office is open. Chief Seo knocks on the doorframe briefly before stepping inside, and Baekhyun follows her, trying to put aside the irrational nervousness he feels at entering his own office, which the loaned surgeon has been using.

The man sitting behind Baekhyun’s desk had glanced up at the knock, and now he stands up gracefully. He looks around Baekhyun's age and stands a few centimetres taller. Tousled blonde hair frames a fine-boned face, with liquid brown eyes that seem to shine as he smiles at Baekhyun. He steps out from behind the desk, holding out his hand to shake. Baekhyun takes the hand automatically and finds that he’s completely tongue-tied.

“Dr. Byun, it’s good to finally meet you,” the other man says as their hands clasp. He has a firm handshake, slim fingers stronger than Baekhyun expected. “I’m Lu Han. Welcome back.”

“Good to meet you,” Baekhyun manages. Is his voice a little unsteady? He hopes the other surgeon hasn’t noticed.

“I’ll leave you to hand your cases over, Dr. Lu,” Chief Seo says, and leaves Baekhyun alone in his office with this ridiculously beautiful person grinning at him. There’s a mischievous light in Dr. Lu's eyes as he tilts his head, and Baekhyun belatedly realises that he’s still holding onto his hand. He lets go hurriedly.

“Lu Han?” he echoes, jumping on the first thing he can think of to say. “That’s Chinese, right?”

“Yes,” Dr. Lu says. He moves back to sit at Baekhyun’s desk - their desk, Baekhyun reminds himself. The other surgeon has at least as much right to it as Baekhyun does at the moment. “I’m from Beijing originally, but I’ve lived in Seoul since I was a teenager.”

That’s probably why he doesn’t have much of an accent, Baekhyun thinks, unlike the junior neurosurgeon, Huang Zitao, he'd worked with in the ED over Christmas. He follows Dr. Lu to his desk, pulls the consultation chair around until he can see the computer screen too, and sits down beside him.

“You can call me Baekhyun,” he says. “Most people do. I'm not nearly mature enough to suit Dr. Byun.”

Dr. Lu laughs, and Baekhyun is fascinated. “Then you must call me Lu Han,” he says.

“Okay, Lu Han,” Baekhyun agrees readily, and earns himself another smile. It makes something inside his chest feel like it’s glowing.

“Where do you usually work?” Baekhyun asks curiously, watching Lu Han rapidly pull up patient files on the computer. “Chief Seo told me you’re on loan from another hospital?”

“I’m based at a private cosmetic surgery clinic - Dream Up Clinic, in Gangnam, if you know it,” Lu Han explains. “I used to moonlight in the ED here when I was doing my residency, so Chief Seo asked me if I could fill in. I was actually pretty excited to work on medical cases again.”

Baekhyun nods. He’s heard of the clinic, one of the better ones in Seoul. “Nice,” he says. “I get excited when I get to do cosmetic procedures too, we don’t get many in the public system. Did you get anything particularly interesting while you were here?”

Lu Han’s eyes light up as he describes working with the dental surgery team on reconstructing a man’s jaw after a workplace accident. Baekhyun listens with interest, thinking of what procedures he would have used for the case, and before long they’re discussing the pros and cons of certain techniques like they’ve known each other for years. Lu Han seems as enthusiastic about plastic surgery as Baekhyun, and he thinks it’s going to be fun to work with him for the next couple of weeks. Maybe Lu Han will have some good techniques to share from his expertise in the cosmetic field, and Baekhyun resolves to make the most of the opportunity to learn from the other surgeon in the OR while he’s here.

Eventually they manage to stop discussing the complications of reconstructive jaw surgery long enough for Lu Han to hand over the morning cases. He’s been on call overnight, and once Baekhyun’s sitting in front of a short list of upcoming outpatient appointments, Lu Han stands up, covering a yawn with one hand.

“I need to grab some sleep,” he says, a slight laugh in his voice, “and I better give you time to go over these cases, but,” he pauses, slightly hesitant for just a second, making Baekhyun glance up curiously. “I’d love to hear more about that circular saw rebound case you mentioned. How would you feel about meeting up after your shift? We could grab dinner and talk reconstructive otoplasty.”

Baekhyun finds a smile spreading across his face. “Reconstructive otoplasty is one of my favourite topics,” he laughs. “Fair warning, though, once I’ve started on it you’ll never get me to shut up.”

“Why would I want you to? It’s a fascinating subject,” Lu Han grins, and holds out his hand for Baekhyun’s phone. After exchanging numbers and deciding on a place to meet, Lu Han leaves with a smile and a wave. Baekhyun finds he’s still smiling as he turns to his computer screen.

He only has three outpatients this morning, Chief Seo making good on her word to ease him back into the workflow lightly. He clicks open the first patient file and finds that he knows the patient. It’s the little girl he did the gate flap reconstruction on last year, Kang Minseo, back for her follow-up after the surgery. He glances through her record, refreshing himself on her history and the surgical procedure, pleased that he gets to see her again.

He hears the tapping of small running footsteps in the hallway outside and looks towards the door. Minseo arrives several seconds before her mother, a shy smile on her face as she peeps around the doorframe. Baekhyun smiles at her and beckons her in, and her face lights up as she rushes across his office, coming to a halt right beside his chair and bobbing up and down on her toes.

“Oh my goodness, who is this beautiful girl?” Baekhyun exclaims, a delighted smile growing across his face. Minseo laughs happily in response, tossing her thick, shiny dark hair across her shoulders. It’s a far cry from the ugly little girl with the misshapen head he saw several months ago. You’d never know that Minseo used to only have half a head of hair, the other half a bare, mottled burn scar. She’s wearing several sparkly butterfly clips, and when Baekhyun admires them she spins around to show him the ones at the back of her head. By this time her mother has arrived and taken a seat across the desk.

“It looks like the graft has taken wonderfully,” Baekhyun says to her, and she smiles, nodding. Baekhyun checks with Minseo if he can examine her head, and with her agreement he carefully parts her hair with his fingers, checking the scar lines around the edge of the reconstruction. There’s no unsightly puckering, the red scar lines are flat and fine, and completely hidden by the new hair that’s grown over them. The scars will probably fade to white over the years as they age. Her scalp also looks healthy, no dry or reddened skin around the scars. Baekhyun is very pleased. Though he hadn’t realised it at the time, with hindsight he knows he wasn’t at his best when he did this surgery, and he’s relieved that the result has come out so well.

“Does it ever itch or get sore?” he asks Minseo.

“Sometimes it itches a tiny bit,” Minseo tells him. “I try not to scratch it, though. My old burn used to itch way worse.”

“Good girl,” he says. He can’t see any evidence of her scratching her scalp, but he’ll write a prescription for a soothing scalp cream anyway, it won’t hurt. He smiles at her. “Your scalp has healed well and your hair is growing beautifully. I think we can safely say that this is the last time you’ll need to come to the hospital.”

Minseo beams at him. “I love having hair, Dr. Byun,” she tells him. “Nobody stares at me any more.”

“She’s gotten so much more confident,” Minseo’s mother breaks in to tell him, looking proudly at her daughter. “She’s like a different child. Tell Dr. Byun about your good news, Minseo.”

Minseo bobs on her toes again. “I auditioned for the Korea Children’s Choir last month, and I got in!” she says. Baekhyun opens his eyes and mouth wide in mimed amazement, making her giggle.

“Congratulations,” he says. “You must be a talented singer.”

“She’s always loved to sing, but she would never sing in front of people before because she was shy about her burn,” her mother says. “You’re really changed her life, Dr. Byun. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how grateful I am.” Baekhyun sees that she’s starting to tear up, and he smiles.

“Not at all. It’s been my absolute pleasure to work with you,” he tells Minseo. “When you’re a world-famous singer, I’m going to brag to all my friends that I knew you when you were just a little girl.”

She giggles, then takes off her backpack and digs around inside it before pulling out a folded piece of paper and handing it to him. Baekhyun takes it, seeing that it’s a hand-made card. Minseo has drawn herself singing on the stage in a spotlight, musical notes hovering around her, and long hair coming right down to her waist. Below the drawing she’s written “Thank you for my new hair! I love you, Dr. Byun!” Baekhyun has to swallow against the sudden surge of emotion that rises up in him. At this moment, it strikes him hard that he’s made a difference to Minseo’s life, a huge one. No matter what else is wrong with him, no matter how hopeless and useless he's thought himself, he’s done at least one thing good with his life, because this beautiful little girl isn’t afraid to stand up and show herself to the world any more.

“It’s lovely,” he says. “Thank you so much, Minseo. This will brighten up my desk wonderfully.” He props the card up in pride of place beside his computer.

Minseok toes the carpet with her shoe, looking a little shy. "Is it okay if I give you a hug?"

Baekhyun sits forward and opens his arms immediately and she rushes into them, gripping him tightly around the waist. He swallows the lump in his throat and pets her hair gently, stroking the sleek locks that cover the place where once there was only rippled, plastic-like scar tissue.

"Thank you for helping me, Dr. Byun," she says, lifting her cheek from his chest to smile up at him.

Baehyun smiles as he blinks his tears away. “You’re welcome, Minseo.”

\---

“GO KIM NAYOUNG! GREAT TACKLE!” Minseok calls towards the field of fourteen young girls playing football. His oldest daughter is running towards the opposite team’s goal after she took the ball from another player. She maneuvers between her opponents and kicks the ball towards the goal. In a bated breath, Minseok follows the crooked line and as the ball hits the net he throws a fist in the air with a cheer. Nayoung turns around to find him in the crowd and laughs at his reaction.

Jangmi had been reluctant when Minseok had suggested he could come to one of Nayoung’s games, but for once, they’d managed to have actually have a rational discussion about it, and finally she had agreed. It’s fun to see his daughter play and Minseok is glad to be here. He won’t be taking her home tonight, Jangmi still doesn’t trust him enough for that, but it’s a work in progress and being here is a step in the right direction. When the referee blows his whistle and ends the game 3:2 to Nayoung’s team, Minseok cheers along with the other parents watching. Nayoung hugs all her teammates before she rushes over, and Minseok feels incredibly proud as he wraps his arms around her. She’s been growing so much lately that he can no longer easily get her feet off the ground to swing her around, but he still hugs her tight, wondering with amusement whether his little girl is going to end up taller than him. When he lets go she reaches down to get her water bottle off the grass and takes a gulp.

“I’m so proud of you! How about that tie-breaker you scored? You’re a star,” Minseok says, a hand on her shoulder as they start to walk towards the locker room. Nayoung laughs and starts chattering about the match and the different plays her team made. Minseok looks down at her with her sweaty fringe and glowing cheeks and wonders how he could have let himself miss so much of this over the years.

They’re almost at the locker rooms when Nayoung’s eyes go to a man Minseok has never seen before, waiting near a car at the edge of the field. He lifts a hand to wave at Nayoung, and Nayoung waves back enthusiastically.

“Who’s that?” Minseok asks, hand tightening a little on her shoulder. Nayoung turns her head to look at him.

“That’s Jeongseok, mom’s boyfriend,” she tells him, and releases herself from his grip so she can disappear into the locker rooms and get changed. Minseok is left in front of the door, staring numbly across the pitch at the other man. Nayoung’s words seem to echo inside him. Mom’s boyfriend. Jangmi has a boyfriend. It feels like he’s just been kicked in the gut.

In the six years since their divorce neither of them has had another partner, and for some reason it has never really occurred to Minseok that one day Jangmi might want a new relationship. Now that he thinks about it, it was really stupid of him not to consider it. She’s the one who initiated the divorce, she’s bound to move on, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. He should be glad for her. She’ll have someone to share the responsibility of raising the girls. She'll be happy with someone new in her life.

But Minseok hurts. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and turns to gaze emptily across the soccer pitches, trying not to let his emotions play over his face.

Somewhere deep inside, despite all logic, Minseok still loves his ex-wife. He doesn't want to. He knows he shouldn’t. They’ll never be together again. She’s still angry with him, blames him, hates him. He knows she’ll never forgive him. He thought he’d come to terms with all that.

A sick feeling spreads inside his stomach, and he takes a deep breath of the clean open air to try and control it. He's so stupid. Of course he hasn't come to terms with it, no more than he's come to terms with Ilsung's death. How could he, when he never let himself process any of the emotions? All he's been doing for the last seven years is shoving things down, blocking them out.

"Dad?"

Minseok blinks. Nayoung is standing before him again, now dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans, a quizzical look on her face as she looks at him.

"Oh, you're changed already! That was quick," he says.

“I'm the slowest changer in the entire team, dad. You were just spacing out," Nayoung tells him, grinning. Minseok gives a startled laugh. It constantly surprises him when the girls make observations that seem to him so adult. "I have to go, Jeongseok is waiting for me. Thank you for coming to watch."

Minseok smiles at her, trying to ignore how sick he feels at the thought of her going home with Jangmi's boyfriend, at the thought of the other man sitting across from Jangmi at the dinner table, the girls there too. The four of them laughing together. A happy family. And then there is Minseok, alone, with a cold, empty apartment far too big for one, and a seven-year-old wound in his heart that just won't stop bleeding.

“When are you next playing?” he asks.

“Next weekend. Can you come? I mean, only if you have time,” Nayoung says, a hopeful expression coming into her eyes. Minseok closes his eyes for a second, trying to pull himself together.

“I’ll make time,” he says and presses a kiss to her forehead. He watches her run towards Jeongseok, watches Jeongseok hug her and ruffle her hair. They're obviously comfortable with each other.

Minseok is not on shift tonight, but for the first time in weeks, he drives to the hospital to insert himself into the bustle there anyway, unable to face his empty apartment that night.


	27. May 23rd

Yixing glances at the alarm clock on the nightstand and sighs. In two and a half hours the alarm will sound and tell him to get up. He and Songmi both have work, but Yixing can’t sleep. The chaos that has resided in his mind for the last two months has triggered several issues for him, one of them being his inability to sleep. There isn’t any anger left in him, just sadness. Songmi has kept her promise of not bringing up IVF until he’s ready, and Yixing almost managed to stop thinking about it, but his conscience isn’t letting him cling to his denial any longer. He can’t turn back time, no matter how much he wants to.

Songmi acts like everything’s fine, but he knows she isn’t happy. It’s wrong of him not to talk about it, but every time he tries, the words lodge themselves in his throat and he can’t speak them. The logic of his mind and the emotions of his heart can’t seem to find a way to mix and be constructive. He's just a mess of conflicted feelings.

He rolls onto his side to look at his sleeping wife. She looks beautiful when she’s asleep, her black hair falling over her pillow. Yixing has always loved the sight of Songmi sleeping. When they first got together and his assignments had him studying through the early hours, he used to get so much comfort from just glancing at her sleeping peacefully. He reaches a finger over and gently removes the hair from her face, and her hand reaches out and grabs onto his shirt. There is nothing he wants more than to give her a child, to see what their combination of genes would look like and to watch their small family grow.

Yixing closes his eyes and tries to think of something else, but his thoughts keep on circling back, and he knows he won’t be sleeping tonight. He lies still, forcing himself not to move restlessly, to at least let his body get as much rest as it can.

The alarm clock goes off at six and he reaches out to turn it off. Songmi gets out of bed first, rubbing her eyes and stretching before she heads to the shower. Yixing feels overwhelmingly tired as he drags himself up into a sitting position and rubs his face.

People file in and out of the bus as it takes them through the city in the early morning. Businessmen and women in pressed suits mix with teenagers in school uniforms listening to music through their headphones. Songmi is looking out of the window, staring at the buildings and trees that pass them by. Yixing wishes he could read her mind. When he sighs, she tears her gaze away from the window and looks up at him with concern.

“Just tired,” Yixing whispers, but both of them know better.

Another five minutes pass in silence before the bus pulls up at the hospital stop. They file out with a few others. Yixing reaches out to catch Songmi's hand and link their fingers as they walk in, but it's not long before they have to part, Songmi to stay on the ground floor and Yixing to go up to the ninth floor. He feels unusually reluctant to let go of her hand. Songmi smiles up at him as she pulls away

“I’ll see you later,” she tells him.

Yixing takes the elevator to the oncology department and his office. The receptionist sends him a smile when he walks through the large glass doors towards the reception and Yixing greets him politely. In his office, he changes his light jacket for his white coat and fixes his nametag so it faces forward just as someone knocks on his door.

“Dr. Zhang, sorry to pounce on you when you’ve barely arrived, but I have Oh Eunji’s husband on the phone and he sounds concerned. Can I transfer the call to you?” Nurse Choi asks. Yixing nods immediately. He knows she doesn’t like to take phone calls from panicked patients or their relatives. She’s told him it makes her feel helpless. Yixing doesn’t exactly enjoy talking to panicking relatives either, but it’s often easier for him to calm them down. Simply the fact that they’re talking to their specialist is sometimes enough to reassure the worried caller. He sits down at his desk just in time to pick up the transferred call.

“Dr. Zhang speaking,” he says. Mr. Oh immediately bursts into a worried gabble and Yixing starts to frown a little as he picks out the important information among the rest. He grabs a pen so he can take notes.

“Does she have a fever?” he asks when Mr. Oh finishes. “Can you take her temperature for me? Stay on the line, I’ll hold on.”

The phone is put down while Mr. Oh goes to find their thermometer and take his wife’s temperature. When the phone is picked up and he gives the answer, Yixing frowns harder and writes the number down on his notepad.

“Did you notice anything else out of the ordinary?” He hums as he listens and writes down a few more worrying symptoms. Eunji must have caught an infection based on what her husband describes on the phone and staying at home is not an option for her. If it hasn’t developed into neutropenia, it might soon. He stares at the symptoms he's listed, slowly tapping his pen against the paper as his heart aches. He'd known Eunji didn't have much chance from the moment he'd diagnosed the stage IV ovarian cancer, and once he and Zitao had found the inoperable brain metastases, her small chance had plummeted to zero. It's just been a matter of how long she'll last. Knowing all this, he's tried so hard to not get attached this time, and he's had her as a patient for far less long than Sooyoung, but somehow it feels like there's a lead weight in his chest that's only growing heavier with each patient he loses.

He strives to keep his voice free of these things when he asks Mr. Oh if he can drive Eunji to the hospital, but is told that they don't have a car, and Eunji is definitely way too ill for public transport. “Okay," Yixing says. "I’m going to send an ambulance to your house. I suspect she’s caught an infection and it’s better to have her here. Do you have anyone to look after your son?” He breathes a sigh of relief when Mr. Oh confirms they have a babysitter.

“I’ll send the ambulance now and they’ll be with you in ten minutes or so. I’ll see you soon.” Yixing hangs up when Mr. Oh has said his goodbyes and presses the number for the ambulance service. The hold tone is a gentle Yiruma piano piece, and Yixing's emotions are too close to the surface for such poignant music. He closes his eyes as the music sets them burning. When the call is picked up a minute later, it takes him a second to be able to speak. He arranges an ambulance to be sent the address in Doksan-dong, then hangs up and dials the ED to alert them to the incoming patient and make sure they page him when she arrives.

His first outpatient appointment is now five minutes behind schedule, but there's nothing out of the ordinary for the first three patients he sees and he manages to make up the time. He gets a call thirty minutes later on his pager that Eunji has arrived. He lets Jinsang know he’s heading to the ED for a consult before he leaves the department.

The ED is too chaotic for Yixing to easily cope with this morning. His anxiety skyrockets as he dodges harried staff going in every possible direction. He rounds the corner and almost runs into Songmi. Their eyes meet briefly, and she sends him a soothing smile and pats his arm as she passes, too busy to stop, but even that's enough to help a little.

He makes his way to the curtained arrival bay where they've put Eunji, and finds that her fever has spiked at 39.7 and her breathing is labored. Yixing listens to her lungs and determines quickly that his initial suspicion of pneumonia is right. They start IV antibiotics immediately, and Yixing arranges her to be admitted to intensive care, biting down on the inside of his lip as Mr. Oh thanks him. Barring a miracle, Eunji won't be coming out of the ICU again. Chest so leaden it aches, he makes his way back to the oncology department and his waiting outpatients.

The day is busy, packed with outpatients and leaves him little time for brooding, or indeed anything else except for focusing on the patients in front of him. When Yixing finally has a chance to check his phone at five in the afternoon, he finds a message from Minseok. He finishes up his last documentation and goes to find his wife in the ED. Her shift doesn't end until seven.

“I’ll be out when you get home tonight. I’m going to meet Minseok for a drink or two,” he tells her.

Songmi smiles. “That sounds lovely,” she says. “I’ll see you later then. Take care, little star.” She reaches out to gently catch both his hands in hers, swinging them a little in place of the kiss he knows she'd give him if they weren't at work. Their eyes meet, and Yixing finds his way to his own smile again for what feels like the first time that day. For a brief moment, his chest stops hurting as he reads Songmi's love in her eyes and sends it back to her tenfold.

The moment is broken when one of the other nurses calls for Songmi’s help. She tells him a quick goodbye, pulls her hands free and hurries over to where she’s needed. Yixing watches her work for a few moments before he starts to make his way home.

A couple of hours later, he arrives at the bar Minseok told him of. It's dimly lit despite it only being seven in the evening. Yixing is running a little late and he looks around to spot his friend. Minseok notices him from the small table he’s occupying in the middle of the room and lifts a hand to catch his attention. There are two beers already in front of him. Yixing sends him a smile and slips through the line of people waiting to order at the bar.

“Hey,” says Minseok when Yixing finally makes it and sits down. He pushes one of the beers out towards Yixing and he takes it gratefully.

“Cheers.” Yixing tilts his glass so he can clink it with Minseok’s. It’s been a while since they’ve met outside of work. He and Minseok were close when they were residents together, but in their busy, stressful world, making time for friendships sometimes falls by the wayside. To be fair, though, Minseok hasn’t made much effort during the last few years either. Yixing takes a slow sip of his drink and sighs, closing his eyes briefly as his shoulders relax, releasing tension he hadn’t realized he was holding. He needs to forget about cancer diagnoses and dying patients for a while.

“You good?”

Yixing opens his eyes. Minseok is smiling at him, his genuine, lopsided smile, and Yixing can't help but smile to see it. It suddenly strikes him that he can’t even remember the last time he saw the ED chief smile like this.

“It’s just nice to sit down and relax,” he replies.

“Did Songmi give you a curfew?”

Yixing shakes his head. “She actually texted me just before and told me that if I got wasted she’d come pick me up." He laughs a little. "She seemed really happy I was going out.”

“You planning on getting wasted?” Minseok asks, grinning.

“No,” Yixing says. “I’m not on call, but I’d rather avoid a hangover.”

“The thirties is where it all starts to go downhill,” Minseok says. Yixing nods ruefully. He can’t bounce back from excessive drinking the way he used to either.

“How’s life been for you these days?” he asks.

“I watched Nayoung play soccer again this weekend,” Minseok says. Yixing feels his eyes widen a little. It’s not that Minseok doesn’t ever talk about his daughters, but actually unchaining himself from the ED long enough to watch a soccer match is something Yixing wouldn’t have imagined.

“Did they win?” he asks.

Minseok shakes his head. “They’re getting to the top of their league division so the teams were pretty evenly matched, but Nayoung’s team ended up losing 5 to 3. She scored two of their goals, though. She plays striker.” He laughs. “I probably sound like the typical doting parent, but she is actually pretty talented.”

“You used to play soccer in university,” Yixing remembers.

Minseok’s eyes soften and go distant. “Yes. Gosh, it’s been a long time. I used to live for soccer.”

“Nayoung must take after you,” Yixing says, and Minseok’s genuine smile shows itself again.

Their conversation continues around Nayoung’s soccer for a few minutes before Yixing scrapes the name of Minseok’s younger daughter out of his memory and asks about her, and Minseok tells him that Eunbi has been practicing for an upcoming audition for the city youth orchestra. As Minseok’s pride for his girls shines through his eyes, Yixing’s own desire to have a family makes itself known. It’s so strong it’s actually painful, a longing ache in his heart. He wants children to be proud of, to talk about, to love so much that he can’t stop talking about all the little details they do. He tries to keep smiling, keep the sadness out of his face, but it seems Minseok knows him too well, because he stops a few seconds into his next story.

“Yixing, what is it?” he asks. “What’s making you look so sad?”

Yixing takes a sip of his beer to delay having to respond. He doesn’t know what to say. Does he admit to his problems and weigh the evening down with a heavy topic, or does he brush his friend off? He puts his beer down and glances over his shoulder towards the bar, wishing he could delay further by buying a second round, but both of them are only half-way through their first.

Oh, well. They’ll drink them anyway. Yixing stands up. “I’ll get the next round,” he says, not waiting for Minseok’s response. He fights his way to the bar and orders two beers and as he hangs around, waiting for the bartender to pop the bottles open, he looks back towards their table and makes a decision. Minseok has been a friend for years, and Yixing knows he can trust him. When he returns, he places the beers in the middle of the table and sits down. Minseok looks at him with a question in his eyes.

“I’ve been struggling a little recently,” Yixing admits. He strokes a fingernail up one of the new glasses of beer, tracing a trail in the condensation. “Songmi and I have been trying to start a family since last year. A couple of months ago we went to a fertility clinic, and it turns out I have azoospermia. It was a pretty hard blow.”

“Oh, no.” Minseok’s voice is gentle, compassionate. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Yixing doesn’t really know how to respond. Nothing feels appropriate. “It sucks,” he says eventually.

Minseok spins his glass between his hands. “Have you and Songmi thought about IVF?”

Yixing sends him a look over the table, but Minseok doesn’t back down, looking back at him steadily. Yixing sighs. He needs to get over this touchiness. Minseok isn’t out to get him. He’s trying to help.

“We discussed it a little. Songmi is keen to try it, but...I didn’t react all that well to the idea,” he admits. “I find something about it really distressing. I guess I'm pretty messed up about the whole thing."

"What is it about IVF that bothers you?" Minseok wants to know.

Yixing bites his lip as he tries to figure it out himself. "I think it’s partly because I hate that I’m the problem, but Songmi will be the one suffering hormone treatment.”

“Pregnancy isn’t easy on women regardless of how they conceive," Minseok points out.

“I know,” Yixing sighs. There’s a short silence while they both drink. Then Minseok says carefully, “Yixing, that's not really the main problem, it it? There's something else.”

Yixing stares into space, seeing nothing. It’s so hard to track down how he really feels. Everything just wants to tangle together into a big messy ball that he can shove away and refuse to think about, but already came to the decision that he can’t do that anymore.

“Maybe...maybe it’s because I care so much,” he tries. The words feel right when he says them aloud, so he chases the thread down. “I want kids so much. I want it to work so bad. I was so crushed when we found out, and if I put my hopes in IVF and it doesn’t work…” he swallows as the devastation he'd felt on learning of his infertility comes back to him. “If it fails, it will really be the end. I don’t know if I can go through that again.”

“I can understand why you’d feel like that,” Minseok says. He’s gone very serious, staring into Yixing’s eyes with such focus that Yixing suddenly feels like his friend is reading right into his soul. “But you really want to have children. Are you going to let your fears take the chance away from you?”

Yixing feels shivery, almost sick, as he realizes Minseok is right. He is afraid. He’s afraid of being hurt again, but his own fear is taking away his chance of happiness - and not just his chance, it’s taking Songmi’s too.

Minseok reaches across the table to place his hand on top of Yixing’s. It’s warm, firm over his, and Yixing looks up to meet Minseok’s concerned gaze.

“Yixing?”

“You’re right,” Yixing says. “I know you’re right.” His hands are freezing.

Minseok taps his fingers gently on the back of his hand. Yixing watches, focusing on the sensation. He can feel himself detatching from the conversation, drifting away in his wandering thoughts. He wonders at how different Minseok seems. Gone is the man who would spend weeks at a time sleeping in call rooms, permanently distracted and caring only about his work. This is more like the Minseok he knew back in junior residency, and his mind starts wandering the pathways of his memories of those times, new to Korea, how lonely and isolated he'd felt at first, trying to learn the language and adjust to a different culture as well as learn his profession, and how meeting Songmi had changed everything, balanced the innate melancholy that has always laid just below the surface with Yixing.

After a few minutes of this, Minseok withdraws his hand and calls his name. When Yixing drags himself back into the present and blinks at him, Minseok gives him an understanding smile and says they should drink their beers before the second round Yixing bought in advance goes warm. Yixing nods and slides his glass towards him. Now that he finally understands why he's been feeling so stressed about IVF, it's like a weight has been lifted from his chest. He is scared, but knowing why means he can work on dealing with it. Maybe he can talk to Songmi about it tonight.

“How was Jangmi when she was pregnant?” he asks. Minseok leans back in his chair, eyes going distant as he remembers.

“She was very emotional with our first,” he says. “So many explosive emotions. She was funny, too, especially when she could feel the baby move. Every time she felt a kick she’d squeal or jump.”

“Nayoung must have been already gearing up to be a soccer star,” Yixing laughs, but his laughter dies when Minseok’s face suddenly goes empty. Yixing can practically see the shutters going down in his eyes, the new-found openness retreating. He frowns and leans forward to touch Minseok’s arm. He would have thought he’d said something wrong, but he can’t see how anything he’s just said could be offensive or hurtful.

“Minseok?” he asks, tugging his friend’s sleeve. He wants to get his friend back from whatever thoughts are making him look like that. “Did I say something wrong?”

Minseok shakes his head. “It’s nothing you said,” he says, but the hollow look in his eyes doesn't retreat. Yixing lets go of his sleeve and sits back, confused. There’s silence between them for thirty seconds before Minseok finally speaks again. “I wasn’t talking about Nayoung. She wasn’t our first.”

Yixing stares. He knows Minseok only has two daughters. Did they have a miscarriage? But there is so much hurt in Minseok’s eyes, surely more than from a lost pregnancy that would have to be more than ten years ago. He wonders if he should change the subject, get the conversation back onto safer grounds, but maybe he should offer to listen to Minseok the same way Minseok listened to him. He tries to find the right words, but he doesn’t have to. Minseok continues on his own, speaking in a small voice.

“We had a son before Nayoung. He...” There’s another brief pause and Yixing watches, horrified, as Minseok’s blank facade cracks and his eyes rapidly fill with tears. “He passed away in an accident when he was five.”

Shit. Yixing has no idea how he could not have known this, but Minseok’s grief is so raw before him Yixing can feel it himself. He drags his chair around the table so he can pull him into a hug.

“We don’t have to talk about it if -”

“I couldn’t save him. I’m an emergency physician and I couldn’t save my own son.”

Yixing feels helpless as he hugs Minseok tighter, feeling him shake as he tries to control his tears. I’m sorry or my condolences doesn’t feel like it’s nearly enough. He tries to fit the pieces together. Minseok had already been married when they met during Yixing’s exchange year, but he doesn’t remember Minseok having kids back then. His son must have been born during the years Yixing and Songmi spent in China, Yixing completing his residency at Yanjing University Hospital before they'd returned to live and work in Seoul. He’d wanted to reconnect with Minseok when he’d returned, only to find his old friend divorced and distant, drowning himself in work, and almost impossible to talk to. Now he finally understands why.

“I’m sorry,” Minseok says, pulling back and reaching up with his hand to wipe his eyes. "I've been working through this in therapy, and my emotions are pretty close to the surface."

Yixing shakes his head. “It’s okay. I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.”

Minseok gives a slight huff of a laugh. “You couldn’t have known. I’ve kept it a secret for the past eight years, practically even from myself. It’s only since I’ve been seeing Yifan that I’ve started to be able to stop blocking it out. Yifan says my grief response is so acute right now because I never processed the emotions at the time.”

Yixing nods, understanding. “We don’t have to talk about it any more if you don’t want to."

Minseok smiles shakily. “I would appreciate that.”

Yixing smiles back as reassuringly as he can and casts his thoughts around for a new topic. “What are your thoughts about the Asia Baseball Championships next month? China Taipei has a stronger team this year.”

The mood lightens as they fall into conversation about the national baseball teams and the upcoming championship, and whether any team has a hope of defeating Japan. They’re on their third round of drinks when Minseok gets up from the table and indicates that he's going to the bathroom. Yixing turns his eyes to the races on the TV behind the bar while he waits for his friend to return. A loud thud from behind him distracts him, and he turns around in his chair to find a woman on the floor, clutching her ankle.

“Do you need help?” He gets out of his chair to kneel down beside her. “I’m a doctor. Is it okay if I check your ankle?”

The woman nods, hiding her face in her hands.

“This is so embarrassing,” she mumbles into her palms and then hisses when Yixing touches her ankle. It doesn’t feel broken, but he can feel a slight inflammation already starting around the joint.

“I’m a doctor too, actually,” she tells him and slowly removes her ankle from his hand. She rotates it carefully, wincing, but the range of motion is good. “I think I just twisted it.”

Yixing gets up from the floor and reaches a hand down to help her up, wondering vaguely if she's a GP or works in one of the local hospitals. Hangang isn't far from this bar, so it's not unlikely that they work at the same place. "Do you think you need to get it checked at the ED?” he asks.

The woman shakes her head and grabs onto Yixing’s hand. He helps her up, but the second she puts weight on her foot, she curses and lifts it off the floor. She wobbles on her remaining foot and Yixing grips her elbow.

“It might be a good idea to take off your shoes,” he says, just as a small, wiry woman comes towards them with eyebrows furrowed. Yixing finds he recognizes her. It’s Kim Junghee, an endocrinologist at Hangang. They’ve met a couple of times over the years, mainly to consult on thyroid cancer cases.

“Eunsook, what did you do?” Junghee asks the injured woman. Eunsook sends her a sheepish smile.

“I twisted my ankle when I fell. It’s Gwiboon’s fault for insisting on me wearing heels,” she says.

Junghee rolls her eyes. “You’re too soft on Gwiboon,” she says and turns to Yixing. “I’ll take her from here...” her eyes widen, obviously just now recognizing Yixing. “Whoa, what the fuck!” she exclaims loudly, then claps a hand over her mouth and bows apologetically. “Sorry, sorry, Dr. Zhang. I just didn’t realize it was you,” she says, words muffled by her hand. Yixing smiles and shakes his head, waving the apology off. It’s amusing to see the usually professional endocrinologist so uninhibited.

Eunsook clicks her tongue disapprovingly at her friend. “She gets mouthy when she drinks,” she tells Yixing.

Junghee takes her hand from her mouth to glare at Eunsook. “At least I don’t get all loopy and fall over and break my ankles like an idiot, like, practically every time,” she retorts.

“Junghee, sweetheart, just take a nice deep breath and let it all go.” Eunsook’s tone is teasing, affectionate. She drapes an arm around the smaller woman and pets her head, ignoring the irritated huffing from Junghee. Yixing hides his smile as Eunsook shakes her head and turns back to him. “At least there’s one kind doctor in this bar tonight. Thanks for helping me up.”

“No problem,” Yixing says. He watches Junghee help Eunsook towards the entrance where their friends are waiting, then turns back to his table. Minseok returns from the bathroom a moment later and Yixing forgets the injured woman in the progressing pleasant buzz of friendship and alcohol.

\---

Jongin’s morning consult is Yoon Dongho, a man in his mid-fifties who has been Jongin’s patient for several months. He contracted polio at a young age and has been left with a withered left leg. On it, he wears some kind of antiquated metal brace that looks like it’s made of cast iron and rhinoceros leather. It continually rubs the side of his knee, leaving a raw, draining sore. Just looking at the purulent, dripping mess makes Jongin queasy. Dongho insists on wearing the brace because he can’t walk without it. In addition to the infection, Dongho has post-polio syndrome that’s slowly and inexorably stealing his strength.

“Couldn’t you just use a wheelchair for a few weeks to give this thing a chance to heal?” Jongin had asked when he’d first seen the wound.

“No,” Dongho had said. “I couldn’t. I seem to be getting weaker and weaker. I’m afraid if I ever stop walking I will never walk again.”

Dongho and Jongin had hit it off right away. He’s a gentle, soft-spoken man, the curator of a small art gallery. Jongin had mentioned his interest in art on discovering this, and since then they’ve always found a little time at each appointment to discuss some artwork or artist they both admire.

Jongin has tried everything he can think of for Dongho. He’s fought with the hospital brace shop about fixing his brace. They’d never seen anything like it. It’s so old they’re afraid it will break if they try to adjust it. They made him a new one, but Dongho didn’t like it. He said it didn’t support his leg the right way, and went back to the old one.

Today, Jongin has to take Dongho to the operating room to debride his wound. It’s the fourth time Jongin has done this, but the infection won’t heal. Every time Dongho puts on the brace it rubs off the newly formed scab, and the wound becomes infected all over again. This time, Jongin knows he can’t let this go on any longer.

“Dongho, you really have to stop using the brace,” he says, as gently but firmly as he knows how. “The wound is not going to heal unless you give it a break. If you keep using the brace, you’re going to wind up with an amputation.”

Dongho nods slowly. His reluctance is clear, but he knows Jongin wouldn’t say this unless he means it.

“Just temporarily. Just use the wheelchair for two weeks,” Jongin says, but Dongho just looks at him sadly, and Jongin knows why. Directly, Jongin is only asking for two weeks in a wheelchair, but that is likely to be all the time it takes for Dongho’s leg muscles to atrophy just enough for the post-polio syndrome to win. If that happens, Jongin has just condemned Dongho to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

When he’s finished the debriedment and Dongho is in the recovery unit, Jongin gets rid of his surgical scrubs, changes back into shirt, slacks and sweater under his white coat, and as usual utterly fails to make his hair lie flat after it’s been tortured under the tight surgical cap. He only has ward rounds this afternoon, so he heads back up to the orthopaedics ward to grab his wallet so he can get some food from the cafeteria. When he gets to the ward, he finds that two of the ortho nurses, Sejeong and Moongyu, the intern Lee Kyungri, and Park Hyunshik who’s the resident on ward duty today, are all clustered around one of the computers at the nursing station, peering intently at the screen. Curious, Jongin steps up behind them, able to see over their heads easily enough as they’re all shorter than him. Kyungri is in control of the mouse.

“You have to see it,” she’s saying, voice hushed as she navigates to a search result and clicks on it. An embedded video comes up, black screen with a white play symbol dead centre. “It’s sickening. I can’t believe such a thing could happen here.” She clicks on the play symbol, and the video starts. Jongin frowns a little as blurry phone-camera footage comes onto the screen. For the first couple of seconds he doesn’t understand the image, but then he sees it’s the figure of a woman in a white doctor’s coat, shot at an odd angle from below and half-occluded by fabric too close to the camera. Whoever was filming was holding their phone down at their side. The face of the doctor has been pixelated into an identity-obscuring blur.

“...know your place,” the words of the doctor are played quietly, the sound turned down on the nursing station computer so as not to disturb the ward, but the venom in them is clear even on low volume. “How dare you question a decision made by your senior? You know nothing, understand? You are nothing.” Jongin frowns, trying to ignore the quivering feeling starting up in his chest at the harshness of the words. He thinks he knows the voice, but he can’t quite place it.

“That’s not fair,” a male voice argues, the holder of the phone. “I may not be fully qualified yet, but I’ve studied for four years and I know how to do an examination. I’m telling you, the patient has a Horner’s sign and Dr. Lim missed it. Am I supposed to just ignore it because he’s my senior?”

From this, Jongin is able to deduce that the speaker is an intern, but he doesn’t get any further before there’s a blur of a white-coated arm followed by a sudden, loud crack. The camera jerks, and Jongin understands that the doctor has just slapped the intern across the face. And then, in a terrible, sickening rush, he understands everything. He hears the shocked murmurs of the nurses in front of him as if from a great distance away. He fixates on the screen, shock locking him in.

The video footage stabilises. "You hit me!" the intern gasps. The doctor’s arm rises again in a clear threat, and then another voice speaks. It’s choked and stammering, barely recognizable, but of course Jongin knows his own voice. “I saw you h-hit him,” says his voice over the speakers. The footage swings a little, catching his silhouette as he stands in the doorway. Horror paints the world white. His face has been pixelated like Dr. Heo’s, but it does little to reassure Jongin. Surely anyone who knows him would recognize him from his build, his hair, his voice. Jongin on the screen keeps speaking, and Jongin burns with shame at the way his voice shakes, the way he stutters. He sounds terrified. He was terrified.

And now Jongin’s heart is racing again, fingers, hands, whole body shaking. He’s aware of too much at once. He catches a murmur between the nurses in front of him, still unaware he’s standing right behind them. “Isn’t it Dr. Kim - our Dr. Kim? It is, right?” asks Sejeong, and “I think so,” says Moongyu, and they’re all still watching the awful video as Dr. Heo turns away from the intern and advances towards Jongin standing in the doorway. With her attention off him, the intern can film from a clearer angle, though their faces are still pixelated out. Jongin had no idea the intern was filming this. He hadn’t even noticed him holding a phone. How could he, when Dr. Heo was up in his face like his worst nightmares come alive, driving him into the trauma headspace that he didn’t know how to get out of on his own.

Jongin watches Dr. Heo back him across the hall and into the wall. He watches himself go to his knees on the floor among his dropped files. Watches himself lower his head as she stands over him. The audio has been replaced by a strange buzzing noise, but it’s not coming from the speakers, it’s inside his own head. The nurses in front of him are clutching each other’s arms, clearly appalled. And Jongin can’t do anything, can only watch, nauseous and shaking as his humiliation plays out in front of him. He sees the nurses and Hyunshik flinch when Dr. Heo slaps him upside the head, knocking him sideways so that he has to catch himself with a hand on the floor. The same slap rings in his memory, and his ear where she clipped him all those weeks ago seems to burn. It wasn’t even a particularly hard hit - God knows Minah hurt him worse - but it looks awful played out on screen. It would be sickening even if Jongin didn’t know who was in the video.

The footage comes to an end when Dr. Heo begins to turn towards where the intern was hiding around the corner to film. Boxy white characters typed on a black screen come up instead. _Workplace bullying happens in plain sight,_ Jongin reads numbly. _This person is a powerful, respected figure in medical circles, and I am only an intern. I’m afraid that if I report this through official channels, it will be covered up, my voice will be silenced, and I will lose my internship and any hope of future employment. I am worth nothing to my employers compared to this person. But I can’t join the many who turn their heads and pretend abuse isn’t happening. My hope is that people will see this video and become aware that this kind of behaviour should not be a normal part of junior-senior workplace relations. Our culture may prize hierarchy, but abuse of power and position is not okay._

Jongin doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with this. He’s shocked and horrified and not a little scared, but most of all, he’s _ashamed_. The shame is deep and sickening, creeping through his veins like poison. Jongin knows he’s pathetic. He’s been told so all his life. He could never stand up for himself the way his father wanted, the way Minah taunted him to do. His body is strong, but inside he’s fragile, far too easily crushed. But over the last six years Jongin’s been learning, slowly but surely, that that’s okay. He doesn’t have to try and fight his own personality, to match up to some standard imposed on him by others. He has other strengths, and gentleness and compassion aren’t things to be ashamed of.

But now that all feels like hollow platitudes. How pathetic he looked, going down on his knees before Dr. Heo. Just letting her dominate him, hit him, hurt him. Just like he let Minah. No wonder his father was disgusted with him. He always knew Jongin was nothing but a useless imitation of a man.

And now everyone will know. Sejeong and Moongyu already realised it’s him, and he knows what gossip in the hospital is like. There’s bound to be talk. Before long everyone will know.

Jongin thinks he’s going to be sick. His body wants to physically punch this toxic mess of emotions out of him. He steps back, moves away quietly so that they won’t notice him, Sejeong and Moongyu and Kyungri and Hyunshik, all huddling together to discuss his shame with their shocked faces and wide eyes.

Jongin half-walks, half-stumbles down the hall, swallowing hard so as not to lose his breakfast. He needs to get to his office so he can lock the door and hide himself away until his body stops shaking and his stomach stops lurching and the air stops being so thick he can’t really even breathe it...

Running footsteps. A small, white-coated figure flying down the hall towards him. The person pulls to a stop right in front of him and gasps his name, staring up into his face. It takes Jongin a second too long to recognize Kim Jongdae with his hair all disheveled and his eyes like dark holes in a milk-white face. Jongdae says his name again, _Jongin_ , and then he’s grabbing his arm and towing him into a room - Jongin's own office. Jongdae pulls him across the office and pushes him down onto the couch, then collapses onto it next to him.

“God,” Jongdae mutters, thin fingers going into his hair and twisting in. Jongin manages a glance at him. His eyes are closed, face tight.

“I...” Jongin croaks. He has to stop and swallow against the nausea that crests with the opening of his mouth. “Jongdae, I...” he stops again and takes a shuddering breath. He doesn’t even know what he’s trying to say.

“I didn’t know,” Jongdae says. “I had no idea. I thought it was only me, Jongin, I really thought it was only me, I never knew...” he gulps, voice shaking, and it’s enough to pull Jongin a little out of his own head.

“Only you?” he echoes. “You mean...you can’t mean…”

“She’s my boss,” Jongdae says, and of course, Jongin should have put it together before. Her name tag is burnt into his memory. Heo Youngae, Obstetrics and Gynaecology. “She always said she was teaching me, doing her duty. That I needed to learn the hard way because I was too thick to get it otherwise. I thought it was my fault for not being good enough, not being a respectful junior. I...I never dreamed she did it to anyone else.” He turns to face Jongin, eyes haunted. “If I’d reported her back when I was an intern, a junior resident, she wouldn’t have been able to hurt you. I should have…I just never… ” he trails off, anguished as he buries his head in his hands, breathing as unsteady as Jongin's own.

Jongin swallows. He’s a mess, but he knows what Jongdae is feeling, because he’s felt it so many times himself, and Taeyeon would always tell him, she’d always say -

“It’s not your fault,” Jongin whispers, echoes along with Taeyeon in his memory.

Jongdae lifts his face again. He has tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. “It is. It is my fault. I denied it, I told myself it was normal, but if I’d been honest with myself, if I’d let myself think, I would have known. If I’d seen her do it to anyone else I’d never have let her get away with it, but I let her do it to me. I let it go on for God knows how many years, how many others, that intern, you -”

“Jongdae.” Jongin puts both hands firmly on the other man’s shaking shoulders. Jongdae is working himself into a panic, and Jongin knows only too well how that goes. Jongin only faced Dr. Heo once, but Jongdae’s had years and years of it, and he’s only just understood what’s been happening to him. Jongin remembers how it felt to understand he’s been a victim of abuse. Like the world was falling apart around him, like he was falling apart inside it. He grips Jongdae’s shoulders tighter. “Jongdae, listen to me. It’s not your fault.”

Jongdae’s eyes stop jerking about and lock onto Jongin’s, so Jongin continues. “What you saw in the video was the only time she did that to me, but I reacted that way because I have a history and the situation triggered me. Jongdae, it’s never the victim’s fault.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Jongdae croaks. The tears standing in the corners of his eyes make their escape simultaneously, tracking two long trails down his face.

“Nor did I,” Jongin says. His throat hurts with the effort of speaking around the lump in it. “That incident happened weeks ago, and I pushed it aside, because it was just too big and hard to handle, and I didn’t know how else to cope.” He hesitates over his next words, almost choking, but he wants to help Jongdae so badly. He knows how easy it is to slip into self-blame and how hard it is to climb back out again, and surely that’s worth a few words from Jongin, no matter how hard it is to get them out. And he’s getting better at this, he is. He told Sohee everything, and he can do it again.

“When I...when I was being abused,” he starts, and the words are curls of smoke around his tongue, the taste of cigarettes and shame. Jongdae stills, looks at him with something huge in his wet brown eyes, so Jongin makes himself go on. “It went on for over a year before someone found out and got me out of it. I endured things that would have horrified me if I'd known of them being done to someone else. If my mentor hadn’t...hadn’t seen the scars...I might have never said anything. Even so, it wasn’t my fault, and it isn’t yours.”

Jongdae’s forehead is all creased up. He takes Jongin’s hand, and before he can think better of it Jongin has wrapped both arms around him and pulled him into a hug. He isn’t even that close to Jongdae, but he can sense his desperation, almost as if Jongdae is crying his need to be physically comforted out loud. His instincts are good, it seems, because Jongdae immediately presses against him and buries his face in Jongin’s shoulder. Jongin can feel the tremors running through his body, and they seem to calm his own.

It’s the first time Jongin has been on this end of a situation like this. It feels strange, but not in a bad way. Jongin has a lot of respect for Jongdae. He’s only a couple of years older, but he’s always seemed to have a much firmer grasp on adult life than Jongin does, the difference in their maturity far exceeding the three physical years between them. He’s an excellent obstetric surgeon, liked by everyone, happily married with three beautiful children. He's the picture of success. Jongin thought that Jongdae had it all sussed out, everything under control. But here in his arms all that is gone, and Jongdae is just like him, just a man who is desperately trying to cope.

“I’m sorry,” Jongdae’s words are muffled, his face still pressed into Jongin’s shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m reacting so badly. I’m not usually like this.”

“It’s okay,” Jongin says softly. “It’s a horrible thing, and it hurts. You can react any way you want.”

Jongdae relaxes against him. He’s small like Sohee, a lot bonier but just as warm, and it’s comforting to have someone so close. Jongin pats Jongdae’s back in a slow rhythm as his mind drifts. He wonders if something will happen now that the intern’s made the video public. The pixelated faces might hide their identity from hospital management who don’t know them personally, but Jongdae obviously recognized both Dr. Heo and Jongin without any room for doubt, and the ortho nurses knew Jongin too. It’s not a stretch to think that Dr. Heo’s identity will be exposed from this as much as Jongin’s will be. The initial shame that came to him with the shock is fading into something a little stronger and more resolute. This has happened, and there’s no going back. Maybe, instead of letting his old trauma shame him into hiding, he can take a step forward instead.

“What do you think about going to H.R?” he asks quietly. Jongdae tenses a little. He sits up and pulls back so that they can see each other. Jongin’s heart goes out to Jongdae as he takes in the exhausted lines of his face. But Jongdae slowly nods, lips pressing into a firm line.

“You’re right,” he says. “I should tell them everything she’s done, that it’s not an isolated incident and they need to do something about it. She’s been the department chief for longer than I’ve been a doctor and she’s done groundbreaking research the hospital is proud of, but even if they take her side, I’m not an intern or a junior anymore. I can’t be gotten rid of so easily.”

Jongin has true respect for Jongdae. He’s got courage Jongin could never dream of matching. “I’ll come,” he says. “If you want me to, that is. I can back you up.”

Jongdae nods, looking relieved. “Yes, please do. It’ll help to have someone with me.” He stands up, shoulders set resolutely. “Do you have time now? I want to get this over with before the rumours get too crazy.”

“I’ll ask our chief resident to take afternoon ward rounds,” Jongin says, pulling out his phone to call Hyunshik. “I’m pretty sure everyone in ortho has figured out it’s me in the video. He’ll understand.”

He’s nervous, walking with Jongdae to the administration area where the human resources people work from, but it’s not as bad as he feared. They’re immediately taken into a small meeting room when Jongdae mentions the video, the H.R. manager arriving shortly after. She’s already seen the footage. A couple of online news portals have already picked up the video from the social media platform it was posted on, and commenters that recognized the hospital emblem on Jongin’s scattered folders have outed the hospital as Hangang. Hospital management is keen to address the issue. Nobody’s speculated accurately on the identity of Dr. Heo yet, and the H.R. manager seizes the lead Jongdae gives her. She doesn’t show a hint of doubt over what Jongdae tells her, jotting down notes as he talks. Jongin listens, heart aching as Jongdae talks about all the ways Dr. Heo has both physically and emotionally abused him over the years, even now manipulating him into working an amount of hours that has Jongin horrified. Jongdae is working enough for two people, and Jongin can’t help but wonder if Dr. Heo is using him to make her budget look better. She must be saving millions of won by not paying an extra staff member.

When Jongdae is finished, Jongin confirms that the people in the footage are himself and Dr. Heo. The H.R manager explains that they’re also trying to identify the intern so they can ask him for the uncensored footage to confirm Dr. Heo’s identity.

“He’s not going to be in trouble, right?” Jongin asks when she asks him if he’d be able to recognize the intern if he saw him again. He remembers the white-on-black characters at the end of the video, the kid’s fear that he’d lose his internship, be blacklisted from residency programmes. It's not a groundless fear either. “He kept it anonymous for a reason.”

“No, he won’t,” the H.R manager assures him. “All we want is to confirm the identity and possibly get a corroborating statement from the intern if he’s willing. He won’t suffer any consequences.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Jongdae asks. He sounds exhausted. “I don’t know...I don’t know what she’ll do, now that all this has blown up. Do I just pretend like it’s not happening, or...” He trails off, fingers twisting together in his lap.

“I am going to take this straight to the director,” the H.R. manager says, “and he’ll want to inform the CEO, but we’ll be taking immediate action. I'm going to summon Dr. Heo now for an interview, and she will be suspended while we go through the investigation process. I expect the outcome of the investigation to be summary dismissal.”

“Dismissal?” Jongdae echoes. He looks shell-shocked. “But…I thought she’d just get a warning? I mean...she’s the department chief...and there’s all her research...”

The H.R manager’s face sets into firm lines. “Dr. Kim, even without your testimony, based on the video alone she has physically assaulted two staff members. That is serious misconduct, and the way you’ve told me she has treated you is absolutely unacceptable. No matter how good she is at her job, this hospital is not going to tolerate the abuse of staff members. You are also a valuable part of this team, and I am not going to put you in a position where you have to work under a person who has abused you. Whatever the outcome of the investigation, I will do my utmost to make sure you don’t have to encounter Dr. Heo again.”

Jongdae nods. He looks so white Jongin is worried he’s going to fall over where he stands. The H.R manager tells them they can access free counselling through the hospital’s employee assistance programme if they wish, checks that they’re okay with being summoned if the H.R director needs to see them, then lets them go with a promise that she’ll inform them personally what happens before any decision is made available.

Jongdae leans against the wall in the elevator as soon as they get into it, closing his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Jongin asks.

“Yeah,” Jongdae says, then gives a faint laugh. “Well, not exactly, but okay enough.”

“Want to grab a coffee? You look like you could use one,” Jongin suggests, thinking that if he’s honest Jongdae looks like he could use an intravenous caffeine drip. They’ve also both missed lunch. “Let’s grab something from the upstairs cafeteria and go onto the roof. It’s probably nice outside.”

They get coffee and wraps from the staff cafeteria and find a quiet bench in the rooftop garden. There’s only a couple of other staff around since it’s well past normal lunch hours now, and the sun is warm on Jongin’s face, the breeze fresher than it ever is at ground level. The view over the city is much clearer in spring than it is at most other times of the year, the air lacking the winter smog or the summer haze, and the wide dark ribbon of the Han river glitters beneath the many long bridges spanning its girth. Jongin lets his eyes trace the hills, following the thin white line of the old city wall as it bisects the preserved sections of ancient forest. He loves the view of Seoul from up high. He doesn’t think he could ever grow tired of it.

“Thanks for getting me through that,” Jongdae says, breaking a long but comfortable silence. “I’m sure it’s partly because I’m overtired, but all the same, I didn’t realise it had affected me so much.”

“It’s okay,” Jongin says. “I’ve been helped through things a lot too. It’s good to be able to pass it on.”

“It’s hard to imagine the department without Chief Heo,” Jongdae says. “She’s been there all my career, and it wasn’t always bad. She’s a really good doctor, you know? There’s no one better in obstetric infectious diseases. I mean, I don’t exactly want to see her again, but we’re going to lose her expertise, and I don’t really know how to feel about that.”

“It wasn’t all bad with - with Minah, either,” Jongin says. It’s hard to get her name over his lips. Jongdae glances at him.

“She’s the one who...?”

Jongin pushes up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the shiny circular burn scars that litter his forearm, the lifelong legacy Minah left on him. “She did this to me, among other things, and even so I missed her sometimes. I still don’t really understand how I could miss someone who’d done such awful things to me, but I did. She was sweet to me at the start. I missed what we had together. We were both brought up out of duty rather than love, and I’d never met anyone who understood me quite so well.” He tugs his sleeve back down. He doesn’t like to look at the scars.

Jongdae puts a hand on his arm. “Nothing’s black and white, is it?” he says softly. “Chief Heo is cruel and a bully, and she’s saved hundreds of babies who would have been born with defects or deformities. We’re losing something good as well as something bad.”

“It’ll take some getting used to,” Jongin says, “but it’ll get better. It did for me.”

“You’re such a strong person, Jongin,” Jongdae says. Jongin is truly surprised at this. He knows all too well that he’s anything but strong. “No, I mean it,” Jongdae says. “You are. Not only did you survive all that, you were strong enough to help me too. You didn’t have to, but you did.”

“I’m not, though,” Jongin says quietly. “I’m scared. I’m up here dreading going back to the ward. The ortho nurses recognized me in that video, and you know what the gossip mill is like. Everyone’s going to find out it was me. I’m ashamed that I didn’t stand up to her, that I just let her do that to me. Everyone is going to think I’m pathetic, and they’ll be right.”

“No,” Jongdae says, shaking his head firmly. “No, Jongin, that’s not true at all. Didn’t stand up to her? Heck, on that video you absolutely stand up to her. You intervene, when you could have easily walked by. You stop Dr. Heo from hitting the intern, you refuse to leave when she tells you to, you distract her and make her focus on you instead so the kid could get away. Jongin, people are going to think you’re a hero.”

Jongin is speechless. He hadn’t considered the situation from that point of view at all, and Jongdae smiles at the flabbergasted expression he must be wearing. The smile lightens his tired face and takes years from it. “We all see reality through the filters of our perceptions,” he says gently. “You’re stronger than you think, Jongin.”


	28. June 9th

Chanyeol plays mindlessly with the silver band around his ring finger as he sits in the air-conditioned café, surrounded by plants and bookshelves and students tapping away at their laptops. He’s watching the door for his sister, even though there are still five minutes to go. Chanyeol was here fifteen minutes early, nervous and jumpy, twitching every time the chime above the glass door jingles. He looks away, down at his hands in his lap, and tries to breathe normally.

He has spent the last month working up to this. A month of convincing himself he can do it, that it’s the right thing to do, that it’s time. Yoora is coming with him, offering her steady support, just as she has ever since they were teenagers. Yeonseok offered to come too, but Chanyeol daren’t risk it. He is not confident of how his parents will react, and he would die before letting them hurt Yeonseok.

The chair on the opposite side is dragged out from under the table. Chanyeol looks up as his older sister sits down with a sigh. She drops her bag on the floor and smiles at him. Chanyeol tries to smile back. It comes out more like a grimace.

“Are you ready?” Yoora asks.

Chanyeol looks away. He doesn’t think he will ever be ready. He doesn’t think he can ever be prepared enough for this.

Yoora senses his hesitation. “I just meant if you’re ready to order,” she says, tapping the small menu on the table. Chanyeol hadn’t even noticed it was there. He’s been too caught up in his anxieties. He shakes his head. His stomach is tight with anxiety. He’s not sure he’ll be able to eat anything.

“Isn’t it a bad idea to be eating an hour before dinner?” he asks.

Yoora smirks at him. “Since when have you not been a bottomless pit, little brother? I know you inherited the family metabolism, don’t even try and deny it.”

Chanyeol shrugs. Yoora shakes her head, gets up from her chair and saunters to the counter to order. Chanyeol looks after her and sighs. He loves his sister, but he’s not sure she completely understands just how bad this could be. She’s never had to hide from their parents, never had to worry about being a disappointment, or worse, a shame to the family. She’s never been hyper-aware of every casual slip in conversation, every oblique reference that might imply homophobia. There are no dirty little secrets in her closet. Chanyeol has always tried to match up to his big sister, always tried to be just as good a son to their parents as she is a daughter. Today, he risks ruining all of that.

He wonders if it would have been better if he hadn’t hidden it quite so well. If they had seen him read comics with gay main characters like Yoora, or somehow sensed it like Baekhyun, or even if they’d seen him with Yeonseok, noticed hands held or cheeks kissed, and figured it out for themselves. Then he wouldn’t have had to say the words out loud. He wouldn’t have had to tell them to their faces. He supposes it’s cowardly of him to wish they’d just figure it out on their own, so that he doesn’t have to really come out to them.

Then again, Chanyeol has always known he is a coward.

Yoora returns with coffee and a chocolate croissant. Her fingers skillfully shred the pastry into pieces, and Chanyeol’s stomach lurches at the sight. He presses a hand to it to try and hold it steady. Yoora notices, and her eyes soften a little. “Hey, little brother,” she says. “It’ll be okay.”

Chanyeol is not so sure. It’s been years since he last heard his parents make blatantly homophobic comments, but the memory of them hasn’t faded.

“I hope so,” he mumbles.

Yoora reaches over the table to pat his arm. He’s so glad he has her. He couldn’t do this alone.

She changes the subject, telling him about her two-year-old son’s latest antics. Chanyeol listens to the stories with as much attention as he can, appreciating the distraction.

“I dread even taking him to the supermarket after the last time. He pulled an entire display of toilet paper down, it was a total disaster. Toilet paper everywhere! He’s really hit the terrible twos.” Yoora sighs. “He’s nearly as bad as you were.”

Chanyeol rises to the bait automatically. “What do you mean, _nearly_ as bad? I never pulled down a toilet paper display! Or any kind of display!”

Yoora sniggers. “You were horrible. An absolute monster.”

“I was not and you can’t remember anyway, you’re only three years older than me. I bet you were worse than me, you were an only child when you were two. I heard only children are the _worst_ ,” he says with relish, the queasy feeling in his stomach receding as he’s pulled into familiar sibling banter. He steals a shred of her croissant and pops it in his mouth, grinning at her indignant protest to _go buy your own, you little scab!_

They talk more about Yoora’s family and Chanyeol and Yeonseok’s plans for summer vacation, and time passes swiftly until Chanyeol feels almost normal again. He wishes this could last forever, that he could just stay here happily with the one member of his family he can trust to accept him for who he is, but Yoora is keeping track of the time. She drains the last of her coffee and looks at him, her face going unusually solemn. They’re so similar, with their big eyes and goofy ears and wide smiles, always full of laughter, rarely serious. Chanyeol wonders if he looks like this when he’s serious, eyes huger than ever without the smile to balance them.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says. “I promise.”

Chanyeol wishes he could believe her, blindly and without question, like he had when he was little. He used to believe anything Yoora told him when they were kids, no matter how crazy or bizarre. The fight-or-flight reaction he’d been able to briefly suppress slowly rears its ugly head again, travelling in shivers of adrenaline through his veins, along with his blood.

Chanyeol’s first response has always been flight. He’s never liked confrontation, but over the years he has learned that confrontation is sometimes necessary. He’s been fleeing this dragon for his whole life, and he can’t live with it looming over him any longer. It’s time to fight it, and whether that fight is to the death is beyond his control.

They walk out of the cool haven of the café and into the heat of the afternoon. Yoora gently links her arm into his as she leads him towards the subway station. He wonders if she can feel him trembling. He is grateful that she doesn’t say anything, if she does.

The ride towards their parents’ apartment gives him too much time to fret. His fingers are clammy and beads of sweat slowly slip down his neck. He’s scared. He’s so fucking scared, and he hates it. He hopes Yoora doesn’t see it, but of course there’s no way she wouldn’t. Her hold on his arm tightens slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep him grounded.

Chanyeol people-watches to distract himself. He sees parents with small kids, lanky teenagers, and the tiny elderly, often barely half Chanyeol’s height, who grew up in the war years without enough to eat. He sees power-dressed business people, a cluster of middle-aged women in bright new hiking outfits, and a man with a huge instrument case, maybe a tuba, balanced on his knees. The subway goes above ground as they get close to their parents’ stop, and he stares out of the window at the buildings clustered together, and the hills fading into the haze beyond.

When they step out of the subway car and onto the platform Chanyeol shudders, hard and uncontrollable. Yoora glances at him and squeezes his arm even tighter. He can sense her willing him to relax, but there’s no way Chanyeol can relax now. As they descend the steps to street level and walk towards their parents’ apartment building, he finds himself regretting every choice he’s ever made that has brought him to this point. What the fuck is he doing? Why wake up a sleeping dragon when he could let it lie? He stops dead in the street and turns to Yoora, opening his mouth, but she gets in before he can speak.

“Oh no you don’t, little brother.” Her tone is teasing, but there’s a determined look in her eyes. “You don’t get out of this, not now.”

“I can’t do it.” Chanyeol feels like he’s going to shake apart, fall apart at the seams. His voice is grating, booming in his distress, too loud and raw for him to control. “I can’t do this, I can’t. They’re going to hate me. They’re going to...”

Yoora grabs both his hands, uncaring that they’re standing in the middle of the pavement and blocking the way. Her hands feel hot, which means his must be too cold.

“You told me that you didn’t want to hide any more,” she reminds him. “I asked you if this was really what you wanted, and you said yes. You wanted to be yourself. You wanted to be free.”

Chanyeol stares at her, trembling.

“Even if the worst happens,” Yoora continues, “you will still have me, and my husband, and your terrible nephew who adores you. You will still have Baekhyun and Jongdae and all the other friends you’ve told me about who have supported you. And you will still have Yeonseok, who you love, and who loves you.” She grins at him, wide and sparkling and so similar to his own. “Be brave, kiddo. I’ve got your back.”

Chanyeol blinks, and blinks again. She is right, of course. He has so many people to be thankful for. It doesn’t take away the fear of losing his parents, but at least Chanyeol is not alone. And he has to do this now. He knows himself. He will never, ever find the courage to get to this point again if he backs out now. He must give his parents the chance to accept him, and he must give himself the chance of being accepted, no matter how slim that chance seems to him.

He nods.

Yoora lets go of one of his hands, keeps hold of the other, and leads him home.

“Yoora! Chanyeol!” Their mother, smaller than both of them, lights up in smiles when she opens the apartment door. She drags them both into a hug, up on her tiptoes as she stretches her arms around them. “How did I give birth to two such giants,” she grumbles as they lower their heads to let her kiss them on their cheeks.

When she lets go of them, Yoora kicks her shoes off and slides sideways into the kitchen to put the bottle of wine she’s brought in the fridge to chill, leaving Chanyeol alone in the hallway with their mother. She holds him at arm’s length and rakes him up and down with her eyes. “Look at you, my handsome boy! We rarely see you these days. You must be so busy at that hospital.” He can hear the warmth in her voice, as if he’s something to be proud of. Chanyeol wonders sickly for how much longer she’ll be proud of him. The anxious stomach from before makes its return with a vengeance, the scents of food streaming from the kitchen suddenly overpowering.

“Take your shoes off and come in. Your slippers are in the cupboard. Dinner’s nearly ready.” Chanyeol’s mother lets go of him and disappears into the kitchen. Yoora slides back out to grab her own slippers. She sends Chanyeol an encouraging smile as she gets his slippers out too and puts them in front of him, like he’s a kid. Chanyeol is grateful. He’s too busy trying to swallow nausea to fully function.

“Hey, you’re okay,” she says quietly.

“Tell that to my stomach,” Chanyeol jokes uneasily.

Yoora grimaces. “Go talk to dad, get your mind off it. I’ll be in the kitchen with mom.”

Chanyeol slides his feet into his slippers and walks into the lounge to greet his father.

“Hello, son,” his father says, smiling widely. Chanyeol smiles back, trying not to feel awkward. His father has never shown anything but love to Chanyeol, but Chanyeol is pretty good at projecting his fears. He’s felt wrong looking his dad in the eyes ever since he was thirteen, knowing that if he knew who Chanyeol really was, he wouldn’t be looking at him with pride.

He shoves his thoughts down ruthlessly as his father steps closer to hug him. “You should stop by more often,” he tells him. Chanyeol nods emptily, wondering if his father will be singing a different tune after tonight.

He follows his father to the couches around the coffee table, where he answers the usual questions about work. No, he isn’t getting a promotion, yes, he’s being treated well and still very happy with his speciality, no, he has no plans to move closer to home. He diverts the barrage of parental questions by telling stories about some of his patients. Luckily, his father seems interested, and thirty minutes pass without further difficulty, until Yoora interrupts to tell them food is served.

Getting away from the questions forever is impossible, however. Sitting at the dinner table with the many traditional dishes his mother has prepared is the perfect forum. At first, the attention is on Yoora, and Chanyeol pushes food around with his chopsticks in a poor imitation of eating while his big sister lights up the table with her lighthearted chatter.

All too soon, though, the attention comes back to Chanyeol. At first, he gets the same standard questions about work. He dredges up more stories about his cutest patients, and their parents tease them both for a while about how they’d thrown fits every time they had to get their childhood vaccinations, but the questions soon stray into other areas.

“Have you met a nice girl yet?” his mother asks innocently.

Chanyeol drops his chopsticks. They land on his plate with a startling clatter, and everyone at the table looks at him. Not that they weren’t looking at him before, but now they’re really seeing him. He picks them up, laughing awkwardly to hide his panic.

“Sorry, fumbled them,” he says. His voice has gone raw and loud again, and he winces. It’s not that he hasn’t gotten this question before. It’s just that this time, this time he’s twitchy and on edge, hypersensitive to everything. Other times he’s easily brushed this question aside, saying that he’s focusing on his career right now, pointing out that he’s still young, that the right person will come along when the time is right, but he can’t do that today. He’s supposed to be truthful today.

Chanyeol looks at his mother. He looks at his father.

“No, I haven’t,” he says, wishing his stupid, loud voice wouldn’t grate so. “I -”

“Oh, what a shame,” his mother continues so smoothly that he knows she was expecting his negative answer, barely even waiting for him to get it out before going full steam ahead. “You’re already thirty-three, darling. I know you want to focus on your career, but it’s high time a man of your standards finds a nice woman. I can’t imagine who wouldn’t have you. I know!” she claps her hands artificially. “I’ll look out a nice date for you. I know a good matchmaker -”

Chanyeol inhales his sip of water. He coughs violently into his napkin, eyes watering. At least he stopped her talking.

“No,” he blurts out as soon as he can speak. His chest hurts, and he can’t decide whether the pain is from the coughing fit or if his anxiety has actually become physical pain. “No, I...” He coughs again, rubs at his chest, trying to soothe the discomfort. “I have something to tell you.”

His mother leans forward. Her eyes are shining. Chanyeol can see that she’s hoping for good news, it makes sense too with the way he worded it after her question, and his heart constricts.

His father nods, eyebrows furrowing. Where his mom looks eager, his dad looks concerned. Chanyeol stares between them. He can hear his own heart beating, pounding like a drum in his ears.

He can do this. He can.

“I won’t ever find a wife,” he says. His voice rings around the quiet room, too deep and too raw. He hears the distress in it as clear as if tears were pouring down his face.

His mother gasps. “Nonsense, dear! You’re successful and handsome and a good man. We’ll find the right girl for you, don’t worry.”

She reaches over the table to take his hand, but Chanyeol instinctively pulls away. His mother looks hurt.

“No, I won’t,” he tries again. It’s so hard to get the words out, but he needs to say this clearly. He needs to put an end to this, once and for all. “Just. Just listen. Please. Listen to me.” He’s breathing hard, words coming in jerks. His mother looks concerned too now, matching his father. “I’m telling you I won’t….won’t ever have a wife. Or...or a girlfriend. Because...because...”

And here they come.

“I’m...I’m in a committed relationship…with a man. A man I love very….very much. I’m...I’m…”

Chanyeol can’t get the last word out. His throat has locked up tight. He wants to scream, or throw up, or break something. But all he does is sit there, wound tight and taut as a guitar string at the very point of snapping.

Silence.

No one is saying a word. The tension in the air is so thick it almost chokes him. Say something, he screams inside, but he doesn’t know whether he’s screaming at himself or them or something else entirely.

“You’re in a relationship with a man?”

It’s his father. Confirming his words. There’s no anger in his voice. At least not yet. Chanyeol can’t find his voice, so he nods. Then nods again and again, head bobbing up and down like the stupid bobble-head bulldog on the dashboard of Baekhyun’s car. Yes, he’s with a man, each nod of his head is saying. Yes, he loves a man. Yes to all of it.

“No.” It’s his mother. Her voice is cold. It forces Chanyeol’s head up against his will. Her face is cold too. “No. You’re seeing the matchmaker tomorrow and I will find a lovely girl for you and you will settle down and -”

“No, mom!” Yoora breaks in angrily. “Listen to what he just told you!” She glances at Chanyeol, perhaps for permission to go on, but Chanyeol feels like the ice in his mother’s voice has flooded out and frozen him solid.

“Chanyeol is already in a relationship,” Yoora goes on. “I’ve met his partner. He’s a lovely man and they are very happy together.”

His mother goes white. Her eyes are pinched. Her lips. Pinched.

“Nobody...in this family...will be one of those... _aberrations_.” The words sound like they’re being dragged straight out of her throat. She’s white with anger. Ice with it. “I won’t have it. I won’t. No child of mine...no, never. This...this is just...confusion. A phase. It’s unnatural. Wrong.” She looks at Yoora. So does Chaneyol, numbly. Yoora’s fists are clenched. “Daughter. You _knew_ about this?”

“Of course I knew!” Yoora cries, anguished. “He’s my brother! He’s been gay his whole life and if you weren’t so prejudiced he would have felt safe to tell you sooner! Mom, this is your son you’ve known and loved your whole life! Being gay doesn’t make him anyone different!”

His mother stands up and so does Yoora and suddenly the room is full of screaming. His mother screams at Yoora and Yoora screams back, and it _hurts_ Chanyeol, it hurts him like he’s a battlefield and two armies are fighting to the death inside him, every word slashing him open inside until he’s nothing but blood and pain. He rocks on his chair, curling in on himself with the agony in his chest, clutching his hands to it. How is it possible for his chest to be hurting so much? How can words cause this much physical pain?

He becomes aware that his mother has turned from Yoora and is shrieking at him now, and Yoora is still shouting at their mother, but he can’t make sense of the words, not any of them. He rocks beneath them like they’re physical blows, curling tighter around his hands, around his heart. It hurts, oh God it hurts so bad. Why won’t they stop? _Why won’t they -_

“STOP!” The word punches, raw and bloody, out of Chanyeol’s chest. Louder than their screaming. Louder than anything

They stop.

Chanyeol looks up into the ringing silence, inexorably, unable, no, unwilling to protect himself from the pain he deserves. His neck is so tight that the movement hurts. The room is white and overbright.

His mother is looking at him.

He barely recognizes her face, cold and twisted as it is.

 _Mom_ , he wants to plead, to cry, to beg. _Mom. Please. It’s me. It’s your Chanyeollie._

_Please don’t look at me like that._

“Get out.”

Chanyeol’s bones, his blood, have turned to ice.

“Mom,” gasps Yoora.

“Out,” his mother repeats. She’s not screaming any more. Her eyes are so cold. “Until you have a good woman, you are no longer welcome in this house.”

“Mom,” Chanyeol croaks.

His mother flinches. Actually flinches.

“You are not my son.”

They’re the quietest words she’s said all evening.

They’re the last twist of the knife.

Chanyeol pushes blindly from the table. He stumbles towards the hallway. He hears them start up again in the dining room, his father’s deep voice joining in now, but Chanyeol can’t hear it, doesn’t want to hear it. All this anger, all this fighting, all this pain. All because of him.

_You are not my son._

Hot evening air hits his face like a blow as he stumbles out of the front door and down the stairs. Every breath of air hurts his entire body. He wants to collapse to the ground and scream his pain into the universe, but he can’t do that, not in the middle of a public street. He’ll get the police called on him.

Police.

Yeonseok.

Chanyeol needs, oh, he _needs_ Yeonseok.

 _You are not my son._ The words repeat in his head as he tries to find his way to the closest subway station. What did he gain from this? Nothing, his broken heart cries. He lost a mother, a father perhaps too, and he gained nothing.

He reaches the train station and staggers clumsily up the steps to the line level, clinging to the concrete walls like a drunk. Yes, he’s drunk, he thinks at the sidelong glances he gets, he’s drunk and the disgust in their eyes is not because he’s gay, but he deserves it just the same as if it was. He reaches the platform at the same time as a train, and as he lurches through the doors he hears Yoora’s voice, crying his name from halfway down the stairs, _Chanyeol, wait, don’t get on the train, come back..._ but he doesn’t turn around, doesn’t care, can’t care. The doors slide closed behind him and the train slides away, carries him away into the empty night.

Chanyeol slumps in one of the free seats and stares at the lights out of the window in front of him. The woman next to him edges away a little. Chanyeol understands. Who would want to sit next to him? He’s drunk on pain, all cut to pieces inside, and he’s sure they can read it in his face, his eyes.

_You are not my son._

The pain of the echoed words has him gasping out loud. A few people turn to stare at him, but when he doesn’t react more they go back to their phones.

_You are not my son._

Chanyeol will never be her son again. The first tear slips down his cheek, followed by another.

By the time the subway train stops at the next station, Chanyeol is full-on sobbing. Deep, guttural noises of grief tear out of his chest. They hurt. The people around him have all moved away. Chanyeol really doesn’t blame them. Nobody wants to see a grown man fall to pieces in a subway car. Chanyeol doesn’t want to see that either. The only problem is that he can’t edge away from himself the way they can.

He buries his face in his hands in a futile attempt to muffle his grief, and his palms grow soaked with tears.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, but he doesn’t check it, even though there’s a chance that it might be the hospital, though he’s not on call. He’s no use to anyone like this.

The subway trip back to the other side of town takes 45 minutes, and by the time it’s Chanyeol’s station he’s cried himself out. He probably looks like a disaster after crying so hard, eyes and nose doubtlessly swollen and red. He hangs his head as he walks the few quiet streets towards their apartment.

Yeonseok is going to know as soon as he sees him that something is wrong. Chanyeol’s aching chest gives another wrench when he realises he’s going to have to explain what has happened to his boyfriend. How can he do this? How can he say those words out loud? How can he tell him that his own parents think he’s an unnatural freak, a thing so appalling that they cannot even bear to keep him in their family? Yeonseok is like Chanyeol, too.

Yeonseok is strong. Stronger than Chanyeol will ever be. Chanyeol isn’t a warrior. He should never have gone to war. But Yeonseok loves Chanyeol anyway, and that is one thing his mother cannot take from him.

“Chanyeol? You’re back early?” Yeonseok calls when he opens the front door. Chanyeol closes the door behind him and automatically starts to take off his shoes. That’s when he realises he’s still wearing the slippers from his parents’ home. He wore thin indoor slippers all the way home and he didn’t even notice. For some reason, this shocks him more than the knowledge that he cried like a child in front of dozens of people in a subway car. He stares down at his slipper-clad feet. They’ll be too dirty to wear inside now.

“Honey, why are you…”

Chanyeol looks up again to see Yeonseok standing at the end of the short hallway. Yeonseok’s voice fades out when he sees Chanyeol’s face. He makes a wordless noise of dismay and hurries forward to wrap his arms tightly around him. Chanyeol’s tears start up again on cue, and he cries into Yeonseok’s shoulder. His body feels heavy and lifeless, energy drained completely as he sobs. Yeonseok holds him steady with a strong hand on the back of his head and croons nonsense into his ear until Chaneyol gets a hold of himself again..

“Sorry.” His voice is hoarse. Yeonseok just takes his hand and leads Chanyeol through the apartment, ignoring the turned on TV in the lounge as he pulls Chanyeol into the bedroom and closes the door behind them. Light fingers brush the tears from his cheeks.

“I…” Chanyeol starts, but doesn’t know how to go on.

“Shh, darling, I’ve got you,” Yeonseok murmurs. He helps Chanyeol undress, then strips himself and leads Chanyeol into the adjacent bathroom. He turns on the shower and gently pushes Chanyeol in, then follows him, wrapping his arms around Chanyeol’s waist as the hot water rushes over them both. Chanyeol closes his eyes and rests his head on top of Yeonseok’s. His mind slowly starts to file the worst of the terribleness away into boxes, away from the present. He has Yeonseok. He still has Yeonseok.

Yeonseok dries him off when they’re done showering and then redresses Chanyeol in his pyjamas. They lie in bed, under the covers, face to face. Yeonseok removes a strand of hair from Chanyeol’s forehead and moves closer, until their noses are almost touching.

“It was bad, huh?” he murmurs.

“They hate me,” Chanyeol whispers, and has to bite his lower lip to prevent himself from bursting into tears again. Yeonseok’s arms slide around him and he presses their foreheads together.

“Tell me what happened.” Yeonseok’s breath is warm on his face.

“I told them. Dad, I don’t really know, he didn’t actually say anything, but m-mom…  
He chokes on the word for a moment, wondering if he still has the right to call her that. But no, he can call her that. Even though she’s rejected him as a son, she is still his mother. “Mom told me to get out. Unless I bring home a woman I’m not welcome there. She said -” The words are so painful, but Chanyeol needs to say them. He needs Yeonseok to know. “She said I’m not her son.”

Yeonseok closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again.

“Oh, my darling. Oh baby, I’m so sorry.”

Chanyeol shakes his head a little. There’s no need for Yeonseok to be sorry. It’s not like he ever pushed Chanyeol into this. It was Chanyeol who thought he could do it.

“I can’t change your parents,” Yeonseok says, and he sounds so sad it hurts Chanyeol to hear it. “But if I could change the world for you, I would.”

Chanyeol closes his eyes.

“You don’t have to change the world,” he murmurs. “All you have to do is love me.”

Yeonseok pulls him closer than ever and whispers his love into his ear, over and over.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

### \---

Jongdae grips the grey plastic handle above his head, rests his forehead in the crook of his raised elbow and closes his eyes, swaying a little with the motion of the train gliding along subway line 6. He’s so tired he feels dizzy with it, the word trying to reel away from him in blurs of colour and nonsensical noise. There's a dull headache gnawing at his temples too, but he's had that all week, he's almost stopped noticing it. He hasn’t been this exhausted since Chorong was born during his first year of residency.

It’s been two weeks since Siwan, the ob-gyn secretary, caught Jongdae as he’d passed from the labour ward to his office to show him a video on his phone. The memory of the rest of that day is kind of a blur. Sickened, shaken, horrified beyond what he could believe by the images playing out in front of him, he’d sought out Jongin to make sure the younger doctor was okay, only to end up basically falling apart in the poor guy’s arms, which was not what Jongdae had intended at all.

Now Dr. Heo is gone, summarily dismissed as the H.R. manager had expected. Jongdae doesn’t know if she’ll get a position at another hospital, or perhaps go into research. He tries not to think about it too much.

Honestly, the whole thing makes him feel sick.

When he'd thought it was just him under fire, that was one thing. He could bear that, had been bearing it for years, in fact, normalised it to the point where he didn't even realise just how bad it was - but he couldn't in all conscience keep quiet once he knew Dr. Heo was treating interns that way. He knows he did the right thing, but he can’t stop hearing this voice in his head. It sounds just like the uncle who raised him from the age of seven to seventeen. It tells him he was wrong to complain about a senior, that he should have accepted her punishment and kept his mouth shut, "grin and bear it" as his uncle used to say. He understands that his uncle’s old-fashioned training set him up to be a perfect victim for someone like Dr. Heo, but understanding doesn’t make the voice shut up. It turns out all that conditioning was a lot more powerful than he’d known.

He’s almost asleep standing up, too tired to care or even open his eyes when he’s bumped by other commuters squeezing on and off the train. He wishes he had a seat, but it’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t. He’d fall asleep and wind up shuttling back and forth from Eunpyeong to Jungnang all night, and he can’t do that. He needs to make the most of this precious evening. He has another shift starting at 7 am tomorrow, and all he wants to do for the next twelve hours is sleep, but that wouldn’t be fair. His wife and kids miss him as much as he misses them. He needs to be present for them while he can.

It doesn’t make sense that he’s feeling this wrecked now. It’s all over. His hours, while still long due to the unavoidable fact that they now have less staff in ob-gyn than ever, have been reduced to a much more normal level. Dr. Jung, the chief of infectious diseases who has stepped in to help them until they get a new chief, had been horrified when he’d looked at the roster. He’d immediately started reorganizing so that the schedules were more balanced, even going so far as to send out a notice to their GP feeder clinics that they’re running under capacity and to refer non-urgent patients elsewhere for the time being. He’s had time to sleep, time to eat. He should be feeling better, not worse, but it’s like now that the pressure’s eased off a bit, everything he was just barely keeping ahead of has caught up and come crashing down on him. He feels like he’s been hit by a ton of bricks, but somehow, he still has to keep crawling on.

The next station announcement filters into his brain, heard so many countless times that if he wanted to, he could recite them word-for-word, in all four languages, with the exact pedantic intonation of the female voice recording. _This stop is Eungam. The doors will open on your left._

Two stops to go. Just hang on for a few more minutes, Jongdae. He raises his head from his arm and takes a deep breath through his nose, trying to imagine that he’s breathing in cosmic energy, like it said in that meditation app he'd tried with Chanyeol back in medical school. It had promised greater focus in exams, but Baekhyun had hung upside-down from Chanyeol’s chin-up bar and mimicked every line of the exercise, his ridiculous bubblegum-pink hair swaying as he swung gently to-and-fro, and they'd ended up laughing themselves silly. Jongdae still hasn't worked out how Chanyeol could ever have thought getting Baekhyun to take a meditation app seriously was within the realms of possibility.

His mind is drifting so badly. He blinks himself into the present. There are seats now that they're nearing the end of the line, but Jongdae doesn’t take one, afraid that he’ll fall asleep even in the few minutes between Eungam and Yeokchon, Yeokchon and Bulgwang.

 _This stop is Bulgwang_ , says the eternally calm voice. _Please be careful getting off the train._

Jongdae gets off and makes himself take the stairs to street level instead of the escalator because he knows using his muscles will help pump blood to his exhausted brain and hopefully keep him alert enough that he doesn’t end up walking into traffic. Their apartment village is only a five-minute walk from the subway station, and the freshness of the early summer evening lends him a little energy. He observes the way the golden light strikes off the bright tree leaves, glows off the rocky outcrops on the foothills of Bugaksan rising above the houses. You can follow the old city wall to the top of the mountain. It’s a steep climb with hundreds of steps and a couple of places that are more of a scramble, but worth it for the view. Chorong is big enough to handle the climb now. He wishes he had time to take her up there. He will, he decides resolutely, when this has all blown over, when they have new staff and the department is running smoothly again. He’ll take some time off, maybe take the whole family out of the city, down to one of the national parks where there are hundreds of hiking trails.

When he gets home, he finds Mari in the kitchen as usual, in her favourite place under the table with her toy cars while Ahreum cooks. “Daddy!” she calls as she trots towards him with her arms outstretched. Jongdae picks her up and nuzzles his face into her neck. She gurgles in delight. Jongdae carries her over to the sink where Ahreum is standing.

“Hey, love,” he says, shifting Mari to his other hip and leaning forward to give her a kiss. She must be finding it difficult caring for the three kids and taking care of the apartment without any help from Jongdae. Guilt makes itself known, dark and cloying, and he forces it away.

“Hey, you.” She looks him up and down and smiles sympathetically. “How was your day - um, days?”

“Fine.” Jongdae knows it’s not what she’s after. It’s not just a polite question, she really wants to know, but he simply cannot muster up the energy required to hold a conversation. Mari begins squirming so he puts her down, then opens the cutlery drawer to start setting the table.

“You look so tired, darling,” Ahreum says softly. Jongdae glances at her, but she’s already looking back at the vegetables she’s chopping.

“I am tired,” Jongdae admits, “but I just have to get through another week or two. H.R are scouting nationwide for new staff members. Things will be better when they start.” He smiles at her as best he can, wishing that he could somehow erase the worry from her face. “How about you? How was your day?”

Ahreum talks about how she’d dropped off Mari at morning playgroup so she could take a couple of hairdressing clients. She’d stopped working full-time when Chorong was born, but she still does a couple of casual hours a week at the salon she used to work at, more for the social aspects rather than because she needs to. Jongdae finishes laying the table and sits down on one of the chairs. She’s talking about some big-shot celebrity who’d come in for hair and make-up and Jongdae closes his eyes as her familiar voice drifts over him, the words starting to blur. It feels so good to just sit down…

“Jongdae?”

His head snaps up. “Sorry,” he says. He feels dazed.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re tired, but please talk to me. I haven’t seen you for days.” She comes over and starts massaging his shoulders. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour, just talk to me until then? Tell me what happened with the lady with the triplets. Did she end up getting a C-section?”

Jongdae tries to remember the triple pregnancy. It seems like so long ago, the days and nights since he last talked to his wife all blurring into one. He doesn’t remember C-section birthing triplets recently, and he’s sure he’d remember that - he’s not _that_ far gone - but maybe Hongki had done the surgery...

The next thing he knows is Ahreum poking him in the ribs. His head jerks up again and he’s being stared at by three small faces and one adult one, all seated around the table, bowls of food in front of them. There’s one in front of him too.

“Eh?” he says stupidly. Chorong and Bodeul dissolve into fits of giggles. Mari does the same in her high chair, though Jongdae knows she’s just giggling because her siblings are. He rubs his face, smiling despite his fatigue at the sound of their laughter. Ahreum looks torn, like she doesn’t know whether to worry, be frustrated with him, or laugh too.

“Sorry, Ahreum,” he says as the children start eating. He only has one evening with her and he can’t even stay awake for half an hour to talk to her.

“It’s alright,” Ahreum says, a little sadly. “Just eat.”

Jongdae looks at the bowl of homemade _samgyetang_ in front of him. It’s one of his favourite foods, but the last thing he feels like doing is eating. He just wants to sleep. But he has to eat, for Ahreum’s sake at least, if not for his own. She’ll have spent hours cooking this from scratch for him. He manages a few spoonfuls of broth and picks at the chicken, but by the time Chorong and Bodeul have gotten down from the table and Ahreum is busy cleaning Mari up, he’s barely made an indent.

“Jongdae?”

“Sorry,” he says again. All he seems to do these days is apologize. He suddenly feels like crying. “I just can’t seem to…”

“Oh, darling.” She lifts Mari out of the chair and puts her down, and the toddler runs off into the living room to where Bodeul and Chrorong are playing. Ahreum lets her go and comes over, puts her arms around him. He pushes his face into the softness of her sweater. “It’s okay. If you can’t, you can’t.”

“It’s not the food. I’m just too tired.”

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.” She pulls back a little to look down at him, brushes his hair away from his forehead like he’s Bodeul’s age.

“I’m failing you, aren’t I?” Jongdae says. He doesn’t mean to, but it comes out anyway, the guilt choking him worse than the fatigue. “I’m failing you and the kids.”

Ahreum sits down and takes both his hands in hers, gazing into his eyes. Her skin is cool and soft. “No, sweetheart. Don’t say that.”

“You know what I promised when Chorong was born?” Jongdae looks back at her unhappily. “I promised I’d always be there for her, for any future kids we had. I wouldn’t let work take priority. I wouldn’t let my children grow up barely knowing their father. I wouldn’t be like my parents.” He swallows. He shouldn’t be saying this, shouldn’t be showing her his deepest, ugliest fears, but exhaustion is overriding all his walls. “Now look at me. I’m spending more time at work than I am at home, and when I am here I can’t even stay awake to talk to you for half an hour.”

Ahreum looks pained, and Jongdae closes his eyes briefly, unable to bear that expression on her face, unable to bear that he’s the one who put it there. He’s sick with weariness, with guilt, with himself.

“You’ve kept that promise for seven years,” Ahreum says. “A couple of months is a drop in the ocean compared to that. We couldn’t have predicted this would happen. It doesn’t mean you’re failing.” She sighs. “I still wish you would consider leaving that hospital. I can’t stand the way they treat you.”

Jongdae shakes his head. “I know, but I can’t leave the team in this situation. Everyone is stretched beyond capacity, it’s not just me, and the patients need us. The source of the problem is gone now, anyway. We just have to get through this interim period.”

Ahreum leans forward to hug him, letting him rest his aching head on her shoulder. “Please don’t feel like you’re failing,” she says. He can feel the vibration of her voice as she pulls him against her. “I don’t see it that way. You just care too much, and it’s tearing you in too many directions right now.”

Jongdae swallows against the lump in his throat. He’s so lucky with Ahreum. She’d be well within her rights to be angry at how he’s putting them second, but she’s not. She understands him so well.

“We miss you, of course,” Ahreum continues, “but we’re doing fine. It’s not going to be forever, after all.”

“You and the kids are the most important things in my life,” Jondgae tells her. “You know that, right?”

Ahreum draws back a little so she can smile at him. “Of course.”

The noise of playing children from the living room is rapidly rising in decibel level. Jongdae winces as their excited shrieks seem to stab straight through his sore head. Ahreum frowns, putting her hand on his forehead.

“It’s nothing, just a headache,” Jongdae tells her even as his eyes drift closed. The coolness of her palm is so soothing. “It’s just from tiredness.”

“You are a little warm, though. Do you want to lie down?”

He nods, wishing he could say otherwise, but he honestly thinks he might cry if he has to stay upright much longer.

“Then go. I’ll come in when the kids are in bed.” She takes her hand from his forehead, kisses it, and stands up to take Jongdae’s bowl away. “I’ll save it, in case you feel like it later.”

Jongdae puts his hands on the table and pushes himself up. The moment he’s vertical, he stumbles. The world seems to swing around him for a second, and he grips the table. “Whoa.”

“Jongdae?” Ahreum’s hands are suddenly around his arms, steadying him. “Are you okay?”

The feeling passes quickly. “I’m fine. Just stood up too fast.” He smiles down at her, hating himself for the worry etched into her forehead, around her eyes. “I’ll be fine once I get some sleep,” he promises, and goes to bed.

He’s woken six hours later by his work phone. There’s a patient needing a C-section and Hongki, who’s on call, is already in another surgery. Jongdae is the only other obstetric surgeon they have now, so there’s nothing he can do but quietly dress in the clean clothes Ahreum has laid out for him and tiptoe out of the house, having barely uttered a couple of sentences to his wife.

By the time the emergency is over, it’s time to start his next shift. He spends the first half of the morning in the labour ward, then snatches a half-hour nap in the call room. He jerks awake to a reminder chiming out of his phone, spends a bleary minute finger-combing his hair into something resembling tidiness, and makes his way to the single meeting room on their floor. The room only contains four people - himself, Chief Jung, Nara, and Siwan. Normally most of the team would be here for this, but these days Jongdae, Nara and Siwan actually are “most of the team”. Hongki is in the labour ward, assisted by the intern, but they'll drop in if they finish with the patient in time.

Jongdae takes a seat at the table and tries to focus on the projector screen up on the wall, onto which Dr. Jung is projecting the view of his laptop. He feels like he can’t quite wake up properly after his nap, and he’s finding it hard to make sense of the points their temporary chief is going through. He takes slow, deep breaths, fighting against the way his eyelids keep lowering against his will. It feels like trying to wade through glue. He doesn’t know what to do with this level of tiredness. Coffee seems to have stopped having any effect on him. He supposes there’s only a certain point up to which caffeine can stave off sleep.

His phone vibrates silently against his leg, and he slips it out and glances down at it under the table in case it’s important. The lock screen shows a Kakaotalk message from Baekhyun, and Jongdae jolts a little more awake as he surreptitiously taps the notification with his thumb. Baekhyun is infinitely better these days, but Jongdae knows it’ll be a while before he gets over the instinctive worry reaction.

 _I’m hunting vampires_ , Baekhyun’s message says. _I have it on good authority that you basically live in the hospital these days, and we all know Kyungsoo spends every free hour in that gaming dungeon he calls an apartment. I’m dragging you two out for sandwiches in the park so I can check if you sparkle in the sun._

Jongdae hides a smile at the message. It’s so good to see Baekhyun’s silly side again. I _’m in a meeting till 1:30_ , he messages back. _Come get me on your way out, or I might end up ditching you in favour of forty winks._

Baekhyun messages back about twenty puppy-face emojis. Jongdae assumes this means his agreement. He pockets his phone again and tries to pay attention to Dr. Jung as he gives them an update on how the recruitment is going. They’ve confirmed the transfer of a second-year resident from another Seoul hospital who will start next week. An attending physician is probably going to join them from a regional hospital somewhere in South Gyeongsang, but Dr. Jung can’t give the attending’s name yet until they’ve confirmed. Jongdae is happy to hear the person has a solid two decades’ experience behind them. It will be good to have a more senior doctor on the team. He misses the security of having an experienced surgeon above him. As for a new chief, there’s no news yet on what’s going to happen there.

Dr. Jung is, apparently, one of the rare people in the hospital able to stick to a time schedule, and he finishes the meeting at a punctual 1:29. Most of the room gets up and filters out, but Siwan comes over with a question for Jongdae about tomorrow’s outpatient clinic, so Jongdae stays where he is. When he tries to focus on the tablet screen he suddenly feels lightheaded again. The room goes distant and seems to swing beneath him, and he puts both hands on the table to hold it steady, praying the sensation will fade quickly. Thankfully, it passes almost as soon as it’s begun, and he quickly forgets about it as he concentrates on the screen and agrees with Siwan’s changes.

Motion at the door of the meeting room makes him look up. Baekhyun has appeared in the doorway, slightly hesitant as he peeps inside. Siwan stands up to leave and Jongdae waves Baekhyun inside with a smile. Baekhyun’s face lights up and he nearly bounces into the meeting room, followed at a much more sedate pace by Kyungsoo. Both of them have gotten rid of their white coats already, dressed for the outside world in jeans and shirts.

“You done?” Baekhyun asks cheerfully. Jongdae nods.

“Just let me grab all this and I’ll be right with you.” He has to collect the files left scattered across the table. Baekhyun starts to helpfully gather the ones at the far end of the table, and Kyungsoo begins pushing the chairs that have been left pulled out tidily against the table.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says.

He stands up.

\---

The next thing Jongdae knows, he’s blinking his eyes open. There are bright fluorescent lights above him, and faces staring down at him, and...hands? On his shoulders?

“What’s going on?” he asks, or tries to. It comes out in an unintelligible slur.

“Forty-five seconds,” a familiar voice says calmly. Jongdae’s eyebrows pinch in confusion.

“Jongdae?” someone else asks. “Are you with me?”

Jongdae blinks again. The blurriness just won’t go away, but eventually he recognizes Baekhyun leaning over him.

“Yeah…” Jongdae mumbles. His mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. He tries to sit up and finds his body clumsy and unresponsive.

“No, don’t move. You need to lie still for a bit.” Baekhyun gently presses him down, and Jongdae gives up almost immediately, too limp to fight. He lifts a hand, finds Baekhyun’s sleeve, and hangs onto it like it’s a lifeline. Everything feels so unsteady, and he’s so confused.

The person who spoke before is saying something about the emergency department, and it takes Jongdae several seconds longer than it should to recognize Kyungsoo’s voice. His focus comes back enough that he can see Kyungsoo holding a pager, and he finally understands that he’s at work, on the floor, with Baekhyun and Kyungsoo crouched over him.

What?

“Yeah. Can you page the ED? I want to get him checked out,” Baekhyun says to Kyungsoo, and Jongdae grips his sleeve tighter, shaking his head.

“No, no,” he says. His tongue feels clumsy, worse than being drunk. “’m fine. ’m fine.”

“Jongdae, you fainted,” Baekhyun says, his tone very serious. “Until we know why, we shouldn’t take chances. We need to take you down to the ED.”

Fainted? What?

“Don’ page them,” he says blurrily. Even in his foggy, confused state, something in him cringes at the thought of being carted around on a gurney in his own workplace. “Don’ bother them. Is not...it’s not an emergency.”

“He’s probably right, you know,” Kyungsoo says. “Forty-five seconds is consistent with a vasovagal syncope.”

“It came out of nowhere, though,” Baekhyun says worriedly, “and he’s still so out of it.”

“Let’s take him down ourselves,” Kyungsoo says. He looks down at him. “Jongdae, do you think you can stand?”

Blinking, Jongdae focuses on him. “I’ll try,” he says. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo take his arms and carefully help him up. They take it slow, and Jongdae has to lean heavily on them. It takes him a minute to be steady enough on his feet that they can start walking, to get down the hall to the elevator. Kyungsoo suggests a wheelchair as they pass the nursing station, but Jongdae shakes his head stubbornly. Once inside, he slumps against Baekhyun, wrapping both his arms around his waist for stability. “What the hell happened?” he mumbles.

“You stood up and your eyes rolled back in your head,” Baekhyun tells him. “You went down so fast. It was lucky you didn’t hit your head on the table.”

Jongdae frowns. “Your voice is shaking,” he observes under his breath.

“You scared me,” Baekhyun says, and now Jongdae sees the fear in his eyes, bleeding through into his voice.

“Baekhyun,” he says softly. “I’m okay.”

Baekhyun wraps his arms around him, pulls him closer. “Why would you just faint like that?”

“I’m not sure,” Jongdae says. “I feel okay now. A bit unsteady, that’s all.”

“Has this happened before?” Kyungsoo asks. He sounds much calmer than Baekhyun, but when Jongdae turns his head from where he’s resting it on Baekhyun’s shoulder, his eyes are dark with worry.

“Yeah, but not since I was a teenager,” he says. “I had a tendency towards postural hypotension, especially if I was very tired.” He shakes his head. “I haven’t thought about it in years. I grew out of it.”

“You’ve been so stressed lately, though,” Baekhyun sounds unhappy. “There was all that drama with your department chief, and you’ve been working way too hard. Maybe it all just got to you?”

Jongdae is silent. Yes, he’s been stressed, but to the point of collapsing? But he doesn’t have any other sensible explanation. He’d rather not think about all the other, more sinister causes of fainting that he knows.

He lets them both help him into the emergency department, where it’s fortunately quiet, so he doesn’t feel too awkward about getting preferential treatment from the triage staff who recognize them. They’re taken into a small exam room where a junior resident checks him over, then tells Kyungsoo and Baekhyun it’s okay to let him fall asleep. Jongdae isn’t going to argue with that. He still feels horrible with the after-effects of fainting, and sleep is a welcome escape.

When he wakes up an unknown amount of time later, he’s foggy and hazy again, and it takes too long to register the familiar tones of the low conversation around him.

“Ahreum?” he asks, his mouth even fuzzier than before.

“I’m here, darling.”

Familiar fingers, soft and cool, slide into his right hand. Jongdae blinks his vision back into focus and sees Ahreum standing beside the bed. He feels strangely startled to see her here.

“What are you doing here?”

“Baekhyun called me,” Ahreum says, and then Jongdae realises that the other noises he’s hearing are Baekhyun’s voice, interspersed with his youngest daughter’s baby language. He turns his head towards the noise. Baekhyun must have raided the waiting room toy box. He’s set up a small wooden train track on the consultation room floor and is making very realistic train noises as he pushes a toy train along the tracks. When Mari puts her small hand down on the tracks, he makes it crash repeatedly into her hand with frustrated whistles. Mari’s laughter peals through the small room. Ahreum follows his gaze and smiles.

“He’s so good with her,” she says. “He’s been looking after her since we got here. She adores him already.”

It sounds like Baekhyun. Jongdae smiles a little despite how gross he feels. “Where’s Kyungsoo?”

“He had to go back to work,” Baekhyun looks up at him from the floor. “He told me to tell you he hopes you feel better soon.”

Jongdae will have to apologize to Kyungsoo for ruining their lunch outing and probably freaking him out, and thank him for helping him at some point, but he’s distracted from these thoughts by the sound of a new voice saying his name.

“Dr. Kim?” One of the emergency physicians enters the room. He looks very young, and his hair is dyed blonde. “Oh good, you’re awake. I’m Dr. Min Jiyong.”

Baekhyun scrambles to his feet and easily scoops Mari into his arms as if he was born to be a father. Jongdae pushes himself into a sitting position on the bed, helped by Ahreum. He feels stupid for being in the emergency department of his own hospital.

“I have the results from your blood tests,” Dr. Min says. He explains that most of the bloods are normal, but that Jongdae’s white blood count is low, meaning his immune system isn’t working properly. A low WBC can indicate all kinds of nasty things, but it can also be driven down by extended periods of stress, and given the rest of the clinical picture and his history of postural hypotension, Dr. Min diagnoses his fainting spell as a result of exhaustion and stress. He tells Jongdae he needs to rest, that he shouldn’t work for at least a few days, preferably a week, or even longer if he still feels unwell.

Jongdae finds he’s shaking his head as Dr. Min leaves the room. He can’t take days off, not yet, there’s too much to do. Hell, he has a scheduled C-section this afternoon, how long has he been wasting time sleeping in the ED?

“Jongdae?” There’s a hand on his shoulder, and Jongdae looks up into Baekhyun’s face. He’s swung his legs off the bed and is about to stand up, his body reacting to his thoughts before his brain has really caught up. Baekhyun’s grip on his shoulder tightens, a shake of his head warning him not to stand up. He’s holding Mari on his hip with his free arm. Her thumb is in her mouth and she peers at Jongdae with huge dark eyes. Jongdae feels his heart melt as his daughter gazes at him. Instead of standing, he reaches out, and Baekhyun passes her to him. She’s a warm, solid weight in his lap, and he bends his head to press a kiss into her curls.

“I have to finish my shift,” Jongdae says, raising his head to look at Baekhyun. He sees Ahreum tense when he speaks, but Baekhyun gets in first.

“No, you don’t,” he says. He stands right in front of Jongdae, and there’s so much worry in his face that it makes Jongdae’s heart hurt. Baekhyun still isn’t fully well. Jongdae shouldn’t be putting stress on him like this.

“I’m scheduled for -”

“I already spoke to Dr. Jung,” Baekhyun interrupts. “I told him what happened. He’s taken you off the roster for the next two weeks. The only thing you have to do now is go home, rest, and get better.”

Jongdae stares at him. “But the department - my team -”

“Don’t worry about them,” Baekhyun says. “Dr. Jung knows what he’s doing. Trust him.” He sits down on the bed next to Jongdae and pulls a silly face at Mari when she twists around to look at him. Mari giggles. “You don’t have to worry about all that anymore. It’s all over. It’s not your responsibility. Hell, it never was, it’s just that bitch - uh,” he covers his mouth with his hand, belatedly realising his language in front of a toddler. “Sorry, that _person_ was manipulating you into thinking you had to do everything yourself and take all the blame if something went wrong. You don’t have to. You got to the point where you collapsed from stress and exhaustion. It’s time to let go and let someone else take the burden for a while, okay?”

Jongdae hugs Mari closer, closing his eyes against the heat that rises up in them, making them prickle with tears. He wants to protest, but he knows Baekhyun is right. His body has just proved that to him. It’s time for Jongdae to let go.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

\---

For the next couple of days, Jongdae sleeps more hours than he’s awake. Ahreum wakes him up every now and then to make him eat something, then lets him stumble back to bed. He doesn’t dream much, exhaustion taking even the old nightmare from him.

At some point he half-wakes, becoming aware of a presence watching him. He sees Bodeul and Chorong are peeping in at him from the doorway, unusually quiet. He tries to wake himself up more to give them the attention they’ve been missing from him, but Ahreum appears behind them.

“Daddy’s still not feeling well,” she tells them quietly. “Let’s let him sleep.”

“No, mommy, we need to kiss him better,” Chorong says, resisting as her mother takes her hand to lead her away.

“Kiss daddy better,” Bodeul echoes. Jongdae is so tired, but his heart longs for his children. He drags himself a little further up on the pillows so that he’s half sitting and flicks on the lightswitch beside the bed.

“It’s okay. Let them come in,” he says. Ahreum looks conflicted for a moment, then smiles and lets the children’s hands go. They immediately run across the room to the bed and jump onto it. Jongdae wheezes as Bodeul lands directly on his stomach, but he doesn’t mind. He laughs as Chorong and Bodeul press tiny kisses to his face.

“Feel better, daddy,” Bodeul says, bouncing a little on Jongdae’s stomach. Jongdae has to clench his abs so as not to get winded, but he hasn’t the heart to make his son get off.

“I’ll doctor you, daddy!” Chorong exclaims. Jongdae notices then that she’s brought the toy doctor kit with her, and his old stethoscope is hanging around her neck. Ahreum gave it to him when he’d been accepted into pre-med, but he’s long since upgraded, and the old stethoscope is now part of the kids’ doctor kit, along with several other old medical instruments he’s collected over the years. It’s probably one of the most medically functional toy doctor kits on the planet.

Chorong puts the earpieces into her ears and slips the chestpiece down his t-shirt. It’s icy against his skin and he represses his gasp.

“Take a deep breath,” Chorong tells him seriously, sounding all the world like a miniature doctor. Jongdae is surprised. He forgets how much kids pick up. Chorong probably remembers this from her own routine checkups with the family GP. Bodeul starts to roll around on the bed, giggling like this is hysterically funny. Jongdae obligingly breathes deeply so that she can hear his lungs. Chorong slides the chestpiece around until she finds his heart, and her face lights up.

“I can hear your heartbeat, daddy!”

“I wanna hear!” Bodeul stops rolling around and scrambles up Jongdae’s chest, making a grab for the stethoscope. Chorong’s face screws up and Jongdae can tell she doesn’t want to give up her doctoring role to her little brother, so he catches her eye and gives her a _look_. It’s enough to remind her to share, and she passes the stethoscope over with a long-suffering sigh, then helps Bodeul find the right place on his chest to listen to his heart.

“Good girl,” Jongdae tells Chorong, and Bodeul’s eyes go comically round.

“I heard you talk through the setta-cope!”

“Steth-o-scope,” Chorong enunciates, rolling her eyes. Jongdae reaches up to ruffle Bodeul’s hair.

“Can you hear my heart beating?”

Bodeul’s face screws up in concentration. “Yeah! You’re alive!” He takes the chestpiece off Jongdae and puts it on Chorong’s chest. His mouth drops open. “Chorong’s dead!”

“Other side,” Jongdae tells him, trying not to laugh, while Chorong rolls her eyes so hard her whole body moves with it.

“My heart’s on this side, silly-billy,” she says, grabbing the chestpiece and putting it on the left side of her chest.

“Shall I take them out?” Jongdae has almost forgotten Ahreum standing in the doorway, watching with a fond smile on her face. He shakes his head.

“They’re fine,” he says. “Let them play.” It’s been way too long since he got to just play with his kids, and letting them doctor him doesn’t take much energy. He can just lie here and be mildly tortured.

Chorong crawls over to the doctor’s case lying on the bed and gets out the otoscope, which is also a real, functional piece of equipment, and peers down his ear. Bodeul grabs the reflex hammer and starts whacking in the approximate area of Jongdae’s knees under the blanket.

“Ow!” Jongdae says. It doesn’t really hurt. The reflex hammer is one of the things in the doctor’s kit that is actually a toy, made of lightweight plastic, and the blanket is softening the blows, but Bodeul seems to find Jongdae’s reaction when he pretends the hammer hurts hilarious. The patellar reflex wouldn’t actually respond with his legs straight, but every now and then he fakes it, kicking his leg up when Bodeul gets his hammer somewhere close to the right place. It hardly matters if he’s not getting a completely accurate medical education at the age of four.

The kids are entertained by this game for ages. Jongdae must be the most accident-prone person in the world, to judge by the way Doctor Chorong and Nurse Bodeul have to bandage up his “frac-ted” arms and his head, put the medical eye-patch over his eye, give him multiple injections with the toy syringe, and then perform a long and complex operation because he has apparently somehow managed to get his entire abdominal cavity filled with “treasure”.

When Ahreum comes back in to call them for dinner she takes one look at Jongdae and bursts into laughter. Jongdae tries for a pout, but it doesn’t last long before he’s laughing too. He must look ridiculous, swathed in bandages done by a four- and a seven-year-old.

“Oh dear. Did daddy have an accident?” Ahreum asks.

“Yeah, but we fixed him!” Bodeul says.

“We _cured_ him, silly, machines get fixed, not people,” Chorong says, her know-it-all big sister voice down to perfection.

“Good job,” Ahreum says. “Tidy the doctor’s kit away now, it’s nearly time for dinner.”

Maybe it’s his hour-long session being doctored by his kids, or maybe he’s just finally managed to catch up on enough sleep, but for the first time in forever, Jongdae actually feels like there’s some energy in his body when he joins the family at the dinner table. Also for the first time in forever, he has an appetite, and eats everything in front of him with relish. Ahreum keeps glancing at him between feeding Mari, both relief and love shining in her face. Jongdae even has the energy to clear the table and do the dishes while Ahreum starts the bath-and-bed routine. He sings a JooHyo song softly to himself as he washes and dries, hearing the excited squeals and splashes from the bathroom filter in. He feels warm and happy, still a little tired, but so much better that he finally understands just how bad it had gotten. He’d never have wanted to scare everyone the way he did by collapsing, but in the long run, maybe it had been for the best. He’d gotten himself locked in, believing that this was the only way, and it had taken the health scare to force him to take a step back and realise that the whole world didn’t actually rest on his shoulders, after all.

He sings a little more freely as he starts tidying the mess of toys in the lounge. He keeps having to push his hair out of his eyes as he works. It’s gotten way too long. He’s not had a chance to really notice, and it was hidden under a surgical cap half the time anyway, but now he realises his fringe is falling well past his eyebrows and the ends of his hair are creeping towards his shoulders.

When the children have been kissed goodnight and he and Ahreum are sitting in the newly tidied lounge - the toys will doubtless be everywhere again tomorrow, but at least for the evening the apartment looks presentable - he says to Ahreum, “I really need a haircut.”

Ahreum smiles, reaching up to push his over-long fringe back from his forehead and hold it there with her fingers.

“I was going to mention it,” she says. “It reminds me of when you were sixteen and in your punk rock phase -”

“Oh my God,” Jongdae hides his face in humiliation. “Don’t remind me. That was a truly awful phase.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Ahreum says. He can hear the laughter in her voice. “You were weirdly pretty with long hair. It was kind of hot.”

“You know way too much of my embarrassing past,” he tells her. “Please save me from reliving that.”

“I’ll cut it for you now,” Ahreum says, standing up to go and get her hairdressing supplies. They move back into the kitchen where it’ll be easier to sweep up the cut hair. Jongdae sits at the table, and Ahreum drapes a towel around his shoulders and starts to comb his hair. Jongdae closes his eyes, relaxing at the brushes of her fingers against his head. The snipping of the scissors starts up and the first soft locks float to the floor.

“You look so much better this evening,” Ahreum says as she snips. “Do you feel better?”

“Much better,” Jongdae says. “I feel almost like myself again.”

“You really worried me,” Ahreum says. “When Baekhyun called me and said you’d fainted...” she trails off and sighs. “I knew you were pushing too hard, but I never dreamed it would get this bad. It took me right back to our first day of high school, when you passed out in front of the whole class halfway through your self-introduction. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen.”

“It got you to notice me, though,” Jongdae teases. “You were so sweet, hanging around in the nurses’ office all day to keep me company and refusing to go to class.”

“I would have noticed you,” Ahreum retorts. “You just…precipitated it.”

“I won’t let it get this bad again,” Jongdae promises. “I’ll be more self-aware, especially now that I know it could come back if I get too stressed. Anyway, the situation has been fixed, so it won’t happen again.”

“I like Dr. Jung,” Ahreum says. “Giving you two weeks off without even blinking. That’s how a chief of department should be. Isn’t there any chance he could take over ob-gyn permanently?”

Jongdae is about to shake his head, then remembers she’s cutting his hair with very sharp scissors. “Not really. He already has his own department to run. If he took over ob-gyn it would just shunt the problem of finding a new chief over to infectious diseases. I’m sure they’ll find us someone good, though. It’s been an eye-opener to everyone, that Chief Heo was able to get away with it for so long.”

“Will you talk to Soomin about what happened?”

“Yes,” Jongdae assures her. “I’ll make an appointment with her, since I can’t just drop in so easily when I’m not at work. I know I need to work through it all properly, make sure I understand everything so I don’t end up in this situation again.”

“That’s good. Talking to her has been really good for you,” Ahreum says. “You always worked so hard to look out for us and care for us, but you seemed to think you had to be perfect. You’d never show me when things were hard. I hate that it had to come to this, but you’re so much more open now. That makes me really happy.”

Jongdae reaches up, and she puts the comb down for a moment to let him clasp her hand.

“Things are going to be fine,” he promises, before letting go so that she can finish his hair. “I had an idea actually. Since I have a whole two weeks off, what do you think about going away for a while? I was thinking the second week, when I’ll be fully recovered, we could go down to Seoraksan National Park. There’s a good campsite with a playground and swimming pool for the kids, and we can take them hiking and visit the traditional village and the shrines.”

He can hear Ahreum’s smile in her voice as she replies. “That sounds wonderful. It’s been so long since we got out of the city. Chorong and Bodeul have school, but we can take them out for a week. It’ll be worth it.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Jongdae says. This is what he needs, what they all need. Time for Jongdae to be away from all the responsibilities that were crushing him. Time for him to connect with his beautiful, precious family. Time for everything to be okay again.


	29. June 13th

Sehun’s fingers keep going tight on the steering wheel. Slow pulses of nervousness shiver through him, tensing his muscles beyond his control. He has to keep consciously relaxing his hands as his knuckles go white, tipping his head from side to side to try and loosen his neck. He hates feeling nervous; hates that it’s a sensation beyond his control.

It’s not that he’s a nervous driver, though he doesn’t drive often, especially not out of the city. He’s on the raised Gyeongbu Expressway that swoops its way south over ancestral lands, passing tiny shantytowns, stepped paddy fields and the grassy mounds of family grave sites up on the hills as well as the broad ploughed fields and plastic greenhouses of more modern farming endeavours and the occasional cluster of grey apartment blocks in the distance. Relics of the baby boom, most of them, empty fingers clawing skeletally at the hazy blue sky.

No, driving doesn’t bother him, especially not with Jongin sitting in the passenger seat beside him to keep him awake and alert on the 4-hour drive from Seoul to Busan. It’s the reason he’s going that’s giving him butterflies in his stomach. They don’t want to stay there either, where they belong, escaping to shiver their way down his legs and arms and set his fingers twitching. Sehun has full-body butterflies. He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He doesn’t want to feel like this for the next four and a half hours. It’s not a pleasant feeling at all.

“Are you nervous?” Jongin looks across at him at the sound of his sigh.

“I am,” he admits. “I feel like dying. Can you tell?”

“You’re never this quiet,” Jongin says, grinning at him. “Don’t be nervous. You’ll be fine.”

“It’s not like I can just turn it off,” Sehun grumbles. “Nerves don’t listen to logic.”

Jongin gives a little sigh. “I know. It’d be nice if we could control our feelings, huh?”

Sehun shoots a brief glance at Jongin, careful not to lose track of the road. He will never forget the burning wave of fury that had rolled over him on seeing the video of the doctor Sehun will only refer to in his head as that bitch driving his best friend to his knees. He’d nearly put a fist through the wall, scaring the dermatology intern almost out of her mind. Why Jongin, Sehun had cried internally. Of all people, why did it have to be Jongin?

Sehun feels doomed to failure when it comes to Jongin. There’s something about his best friend that makes Sehun need to protect, but he always seems to find himself a step behind. The tearful phone calls to America when they were residents would have Sehun clenching his fists so tightly his fingernails dug purple grooves into his palms, listening helplessly as Jongin’s breath choked and his voice shook on the other end of the line, ten thousand kilometres away. And now he was helpless again, fists clenched and furious, watching that bitch drive his best friend into what Sehun recognized as the start of one of Jongin’s crippling panic attacks. Even at the memory the fury creeps back up inside him, burning away his nervousness for a moment, and his fingers go white on the steering wheel for a different reason.

Jongin seems better, though. Better than Sehun has ever really known him. Even before Sehun went off to America and failed his best friend in his time of need, even when they’d first been paired as roommates in college, he’d sensed this fragility about him, felt this instinct to protect. Even as Jongin grew in confidence and maturity over the years, that air of fragility had never really left. Sehun had been terrified that the latest incident would drive Jongin back into the trauma, losing all the progress his friend had made over the years.

He’d never been so glad to be proven wrong. Jongin was upset, shaken and a little tearful when Sehun finally found him and grabbed his upper arms so tight he’d probably bruised him, scowled into his face and, voice cracking, yelled “what the fuck? what the fuck, Jongin?” because anger was the only way Sehun knew how to process the level of fear and worry surging through him.

But Jongin was not broken. He’d hugged Sehun, promised he was okay, that he was fine, seemed like he really meant it. He’d talked Sehun down, rather than the other way round.

Sehun had never been so proud of Jongin in his whole life.

Jongin sends him one of his golden smiles, wide and amused. “Dude, don’t look so stressed,” he says. “It’s just an interview.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Sehun growls. Just an interview, indeed.

Jongin laughs at him. “Do you wanna practice, or talk about something else to take your mind off it?”

“Practice,” Sehun says. He knows he won’t be able to focus on anything else.

Jongin pretends to be the interviewer and asks Sehun a bunch of typical questions he’s found on his phone. It’s easy to answer with Jongin asking them, feels familiar, reminding him of how they’d studied together back in university. Sehun finds a little reassurance as he’s able to explain his answers without blanking out, or, God forbid, the return of the slight lisp he’d spent so long training out of his system.

They’re about halfway there by the time Jongin has asked everything he can think of. Sehun pulls into a rest stop, a couple of restaurants and souvenir shops, along with a hiking shop because they’re close to the mountains here. They get a late breakfast and eat it outside in the warm freshness of the countryside air. The rest of the drive is passed by discussing the latest releases of some of their favourite games, and Sehun almost forgets his nerves, right up until the sat-nav directs him to exit the freeway and enter the city of Busan.

Then the nerves flood back with a vengeance, and he’s silent and tense, insides quivering, whole body coiled tight as a spring as he follows the sat-nav’s spoken directions through the suburbs.

Sehun wants this so badly, that’s the problem. Working with Dr. Jeong Yongjun is the opportunity of a lifetime. And Busan. Mikyung. Everything Sehun wants is within the grasp of his fingers. Which, incidentally, are starting to shake.

They’ve arrived. Sehun can see the clinic, a converted residential house in one of the new suburbs cropping up along the southern coast. The streets here are wider than the ones in the city proper, where the old buildings cling to the hills overlooking the port like colourful barnacles. The pale blue signboard on the front wall gleams. Every house in this neighborhood is beautiful. There’s a small car park in front of the clinic, but Sehun doesn’t drive into it. Instead he pulls over to the side of the road a house before it. He stops the engine and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. He feels physically sick.

“Fuck,” he moans.

Jongin puts his hand on Sehun’s back and rubs gently.

“You got this,” he says quietly. “Deep breaths.”

“I can do this,” Sehun whispers.

“You can.” He can hear the smile in Jongin’s voice. “You fit this in every possible way, and you’re a great dermatologist. If this Dr. Jeong doesn’t hire you, he’s crazy. Now go in there and imagine like you already got the job. This is just a formality, yeah?”

Sehun nods and lifts his forehead off the wheel.

“Smile,” Jongin murmurs. He reaches up to tidy Sehun’s hair, swept up and back off his forehead today in an attempt to make him look a little older and more mature, then adjusts the collar of his shirt around his tie. “You look much less scary when you smile.”

“I hate you,” Sehun says, without conviction.

“You love me and you know it.” Jongin pats his shoulder.

Sehun punches his upper arm weakly.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take,” he says. “You can drive around if you want.”

“I’ll go for a walk, I think,” Jongin says, glancing out at the pretty street. “It’s a nice area. You’ll be so classy when you’re working here.”

“Don’t,” Sehun groans as his stomach decides to act like he’s on a rollercoaster and swoops sickeningly. “Don’t do predictions. I can’t think about it anymore. I just have to get through it now.”

They get out of the car and stand together on the pavement. Jongin peels Sehun’s fingers open so he can take the car keys from his clenched fist and puts them in his pocket, then puts both hands on his shoulders.

“Breathe,” he says. Sehun obeys, breathing as deep as he can and letting it out again. He stares at his best friend helplessly, trying not to tremble.

Jongin grins at him, lets go of his shoulders and whacks him on the arm. “Go on, you big idiot,” he says fondly. “Text me when you get out if I’m not here.”

Sehun nods. He’s too wrought-up to thank Jongin, but he knows he doesn’t need to say it aloud. Jongin understands him. He turns around without another word and walks towards the dermatology clinic.

After Sehun had spent a couple of weeks researching buying a practice and starting up on his own, stressing himself sleepless over start-up loans and legalities, he had come to the conclusion that he wasn’t ready. He just didn’t know what he was doing. He’d only ever worked in a hospital, never in private practice, and after trying to figure out the running-a-business side of things, he’d concluded that he was getting in way over his head. He needed to find another way to make it to Busan.

He’d found an opening at one of the Busan hospitals for a micrographic surgery-trained dermatologist, which Sehun is, but he doesn’t want to stay in the world of hospital-based practice. He’s tired of the irregular shift hours, tired of being called into the hospital at any time of the day or night. His profession is not his priority in life, not like it is for some of his friends. He’s moving here for Mikyung, and he wants to actually be able to be with her, start their life together the way he means to go on. He’d called the chief of dermatology at SNU, where he’d studied, and the chief had known of two former students currently practicing in Busan and looking for staff. One of these was the head of a large clinic in Haeundae looking for a staff dermatologist, and the other was Dr. Jeong Yongjun. Sehun had nearly dropped his phone when he’d heard the name. Jeong Yongjun is one of the country’s leading dermatologists. Sehun knew his groundbreaking work on radiofrequency. He hadn’t even known he practiced out of Busan.

Dr. Jeong’s practice is preferable to the Haeundae practice in every way, except for one. The starting salary is terrible. If Sehun gets this job, he’ll be lower-paid than he was in his first year of residency. But what makes the practice desirable is the opportunity Dr. Jeong is offering. For the first year, Sehun would basically be an indentured servant. But after that, he’d be an equal partner. It’s worth being low-paid for a year for that. Sehun wants this opportunity. If he gets it, he’ll be set for life.

If only he can convince Dr. Jeong that taking Sehun on for future partnership, a young no-name who’s worked in hospital dermatology for his entire career and hasn’t even published a single paper, is a good idea.

His polished shoes crunch on the fine gravel of the car park in front of the clinic. The house is fairly new, like the rest of the suburb, and aesthetically pleasing, with a central archway set on pale brick columns and large windows to either side. On the archway over the door, DERMATOLOGY is spelled out in shiny plate letters. Beneath it in smaller letters are the words JEONG YONGJUN, MD. Sehun finds himself picturing how it would look in equal partnership. JEONG YONGJUN, MD & OH SEHUN, MD. The idea of his name up alongside the famous dermatologist’s sends a frisson right through his body.

He shakes his head. He’s as bad as Jongin, predicting the future like this when he hasn’t even stepped foot through the door. He makes himself walk forwards, under the shade of the archway and through the doors. He’s met with cool air and the familiar, clean smell of a medical clinic, and immediately the smell makes him feel a little more at home. He gets a brief impression of a wide, airy waiting room as he walks towards the reception desk. His footsteps are loud on the wooden floor, polished the colour of honey.

The receptionist behind the desk looks up with a welcoming smile. On giving his name, he’s asked to wait for a few minutes. Sehun finds the nearest chair, sits down, and tries to give the impression that he’s cool, he’s calm, and he’s definitely not about to throw up with nerves. He can’t even distract himself by looking at his phone. He wouldn’t be able to focus. He’s never been so grateful that he doesn’t have the kind of face that easily betrays emotion. He knows he’s gone paler than usual, but Dr. Jeong won’t know that’s not his usual colour.

It’s kind of funny, sitting in a practice waiting room, waiting to be seen by a dermatologist. He feels like a patient. His mind jitters off on a tangent, wondering what kind of conditions Dr. Jeong usually sees, what equipment he has available. It’ll be different to hospital practice, where Sehun mainly sees skin carcinomas and other extreme cases.

“Dr. Oh?”

Sehun’s head jerks up so fast he nearly puts his neck out. He stands up, recognizing Dr. Jeong immediately as the man walks out of the hallway leading towards the clinical practice rooms.

Sehun has done his research. Dr. Jeong’s headshot is on the clinic’s website, along with highlights of his medical career, and his registered practitioner details were available to Sehun via the national dermatology society listings. He is 43 years old, was born here in Busan, and has been a leading figure in dermatology since publishing the world’s first research into the use of radiofrequency. The man in front of him stands about 10 centimeters shorter than Sehun, and is well-built, muscular and lean. His face is handsome, mid-toned skin in excellent condition, as a dermatologist’s should be. Short black hair is swept back from his forehead, not a hint of grey among it. Sehun wonders if he dyes it.

Dr. Jeong smiles at him, revealing a row of straight, gleaming teeth, and holds out a hand to shake. Sehun takes it and attempts a smile back.

“I’m Dr. Jeong Yongjun,” Dr. Jeong says, as if Sehun needs the introduction to know this. His voice is as firm and confident as his handshake.

“Oh Sehun,” he replies, incredibly relieved when his voice comes out steady and doesn’t crack. “Good to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Dr. Jeong leads him through the clinic to his office. Sehun gets brief glimpses of the rooms through a couple of open doors, of equipment he recognizes, much newer-looking than the hospital equipment and gleamingly clean. “Thank you for travelling all this way,” Dr. Jeong says as he takes a seat, gesturing to Sehun to sit opposite. “It’s a long drive. Or did you take the train?”

“No, I drove,” Sehun says. “It’s no trouble. I come to Busan often anyway, because my partner lives here. She’s a reporter for the Busan branch of the Ilbo.” He shuts his mouth with a snap, cursing himself for babbling like a nervous idiot. As if Dr. Jeong cares!

But Dr. Jeong looks interested, leaning forward on his desk. “Oh, she’s with the Ilbo? My younger brother’s in the editorial department now, but he started out as a beat reporter. What does your partner specialize in?”

Sehun explains Mikyung’s role and the story she’s currently working on, Dr. Jeong tells him about some of the stories his brother covered, and the discussion segues naturally into Sehun’s responsibilities in his current role at Hangang, the latest interesting condition he’s treating, and a similar case Dr. Jeong had seen a couple of years ago. It’s only about ten minutes later that Sehun realises, with a sudden panicked jolt, that the so-called “interview” has actually started. His nerves make a bid for comeback and he gets a bit more stilted after that, but they’ve already established a rapport. Dr. Jeong is easy to talk to, open and friendly, and he’s speaking to Sehun as if he were an equal despite the glaringly obvious gap in their ages and experience.

“Do you have any experience in dermatoscope photography?” Dr. Jeong asks. Sehun feels like he’s lighting up as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He has an entire folder full of dermatoscope photographs he’s sent to Mikyung. He gloats silently to himself as Dr. Jeong makes impressed noises, swiping sideways through Sehun’s large collection of interesting lesions. His irrepressible urge to tease his girlfriend is good for something after all.

Dr. Jeong draws the interview to a close. He smiles at Sehun and shakes his hand again, thanking him for taking time out of his schedule to come down to Busan, and telling him he’ll be in touch very soon. Sehun leaves the clinic and walks towards his car. He feels drained, like he’s just come off back-to-back shifts rather than a half-hour interview.

Jongin has perched himself cross-legged on the hood of Sehun’s car, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees. He’s tilting his phone from side to side, triumph and frustration flickering across his expressive face in quick succession as he plays a racing game. He glances up as Sehun approaches and lowers his phone immediately, eyes going wide and eager.

“How did it go?”

Sehun flops against the car hood next to Jongin and breathes out what feels like an entire morning’s worth of tension. “I think it went well.”

Jongin lets out a crow of triumph and whacks him so hard on the back that Sehun folds forward with an oof. “You see? I knew you could do it!”

“He’s really nice,” Sehun says when he’s finished pummeling Jongin in retribution. “Dr. Jeong, I mean. His brother works at the Ilbo like Mikyung. He spoke to me like an equal. He said he’d contact me soon. I think that’s a good sign.”

“It is!” Jongin unfolds his legs and jumps off the car hood, looking way more excited than Sehun. “He wouldn’t have said that if he wasn’t interested!”

“I guess I have to wait and see,” Sehun says, but his smile is slipping out no matter how hard he tries to stop it. Jongin grabs him in a quick, hard hug before letting him go and ruffling his hair. Sehun tries to duck away and they play-wrestle for a few moments. It gets the residual anxiety out of Sehun’s system, and soon they’re both laughing freely.

They spend the next few hours wandering around Busan. They have to go back to Seoul tonight as they both have work tomorrow, but Sehun isn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to see Mikyung while he’s here, and he knows Jongin doesn’t mind. Jongin picks up several souvenirs for Sohee along the beachfront while Sehun eyes the swell with a surfer’s expert eye. It’s looking good, about five to six foot at a glance, glassy and well-spaced. He hopes it stays good for the next couple of hours until Mikyung gets out of work.

They pick up Mikyung from the Ilbo office and drive to her house. Sehun left one of his three surfboards in her garage the last time he was down here, his beloved JS Monsta roundtail, an all-rounder that performs well on most breaks. Mikyung is excited and babbling as she rushes through the house, shedding her office clothes with so little care for modesty that Jongin turns to stare pointedly out of the window, blushing scarlet. Sehun follows Mikyung around, picking up clothes like a trail of breadcrumbs and ending up in her bedroom, where she’s already in a bikini top, dragging her wetsuit up her legs to her waist and leaving the arms dangling. He dumps her clothes on the bed and laughs at her.

“Calm down, baby. The waves aren’t going anywhere.”

“No, but you are,” Mikyung points out, standing on tiptoes to kiss the tip of his nose before spinning away to snatch up a bag filled with towels. “You have to get back to Seoul tonight. We only have a few hours.”

Sehun rubs his nose with his palm. It tickles when she kisses him there. “Soon we’ll be able to be together all the time,” he says. Mikyung pauses in her spinning to beam at him, tanned and freckled and hair wild from dragging her shirt off over her head, the most beautiful creature Sehun has ever seen.

“I’m so happy,” she says. “I’m just so happy, Oh Sehun!”

Sehun left a wetsuit in Mikyung’s garage along with his board, and he’s brought a spare one with him for Jongin to wear. Jongin has never surfed before. He eyes the small collection of narrow, pointy-nosed shortboards leaning against the wall dubiously. Sehun is eyeing them dubiously too, but it’s more because he’s wondering how he’s going to fit three surfboards in his Hyundai Sonata. He usually only has his own, slotted between the seats.

“They look kind of…tippy,” Jongin is saying to Mikyung. “I’m gonna spend more time swimming than surfing.”

“It’s a pity I don’t have a longboard,” Mikyung says. “They’re bigger so they’re way easier to balance on, better for beginners - oh!” She lunges for her bag, dropped in the centre of the garage. “I’ll call Yoochun! He’s got a whole collection of longboards, he’d be happy to lend you one.”

“You’re gonna invite Yoochun?” Sehun pauses, a shortboard tucked under each arm on his way out to the car.

“Yeah, he’s got a ute and a roof-rack, it’ll be way easier to get the boards there if he takes us. He only lives five minutes away,” Mikyung says, already dialing.

Sehun tries not to pout. Choi Yoochun, with his stupidly broad shoulders and show-off muscles and his knowing smirk when he’d looked at Sehun. He takes the shortboards outside and leans them against the wall ready to load up, then hands Jongin his spare wetsuit to change into. Jongin disappears into the house and Mikyung comes out of the garage.

“Yoochun says he’ll be here in ten. He’s bringing a soft-top for Jongin,” she tells him.

“Great,” Sehun says, but something in his voice or face betrays him. Mikyung stops rummaging in her bag, bottle of sunscreen in hand as she peers up at him.

“What?”

“What, what?” Sehun retorts, but Mikyung is having none of it.

“I know that face. Tell me what you’re pouting about,” she says.

“I’m not pouting!”

Mikyung’s face lights up. “Is this because I invited Yoochun?”

“No!”

“It is!” Mikyung looks utterly delighted. “Oh Sehun, are you being jealous right now?”

“Nooo,” Sehun whines. “I’m not jealous. I just don’t like that guy.”

“You don’t even know him,” Mikyung slides her arms around his waist and leans against his front, grinning up at him cheekily. “You met him for like, five whole seconds.”

“That’s long enough to know,” Sehun says, trying to retain his grumpy frown in the face of her cuteness. It is not easy.

Mikyung gives a very inelegant snort. “It is not.”

“He gets to take you surfing all the time,” Sehun mumbles. “It’s not fair.”

Mikyung actually coos at him. “Oh, baby,” she says, reaches up to pet his hair. “You don’t have to be jealous of Yoochun. Even if it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

“Stop it!” Sehun tries to wriggle away. Admittedly, he doesn’t try very hard.

“Yoochun is a good friend,” Mikyung says. “But he’s not you.”

“Okay, okay,” Sehun mutters grudgingly, though he can’t help the smile that curves his eyes up at her words. “I’ll give him another chance.”

Mikyung grins at him and lets go as Jongin returns, wetsuit around his waist and arms dangling, the same way Mikyung is wearing hers. “Go get changed, Yoochun will be here any minute.” Mikyung gives him a little shove and starts to explain to Jongin about the new plan.

Sehun changes into his wetsuit and is back just as a big white ute pulls into Mikyung’s drive, two longboards in padded silver bags strapped to the roof-rack. Yoochun jumps out of the driver’s side door, tanned and grinning in board shorts and a thin singlet which shows off every bulging muscle in his biceps and quite a lot of chest too. He holds up a hand to Mikyung, who jumps up to high-five him enthusiastically, then does the same to Jongin, who slaps his palm rather more tentatively.

“Jongin, right? Choi Yoochun. Your first time? Not to worry, I’ve got a soft-top Gromster on board for you. Like standing on a table. You’ll be riding like a pro in no time.”

Jongin smiles, shy as he always is with new people, but obviously being quickly put at ease with Yoochun’s cheerful enthusiasm. Sehun finds himself warming just a little to Yoochun. Okay, so maybe the man isn’t quite so bad. Anyone who makes Jongin smile like that so quickly is already a step closer to Sehun’s good books. He heads over to greet Yoochun, then grabs his and Mikyung’s surfboards, following Yoochun’s directions to “toss ‘em in the back.” Sehun lays the shorter boards flat in the back truck bed, noticing the numerous aged bumper stickers from surf brands and contests littering the back of the ute.

Yoochun drives like he’s in a car chase, taking the railless cliff-edge corners at speeds which have Sehun clinging to the inner door handle and praying for his life. Mikyung, in the front next to Yoochun, is apparently used to this, never pausing in her chatter for a moment. Beside him, Jongin giggles nervously.

“Is this how all southerners drive?” he whispers to Sehun.

“I have no idea, and I’m never going to find out,” Sehun mutters back. He’s never getting in a car with a southerner again. Except, of course, on the way back. Damn.

By the time they make it to Yoochun’s “secret spot”, a pretty little bay with a reef-break Sehun has been eyeing up since they came around the corner on the top of the cliff, Jongin has gone pale green and has to walk a few steps away and breathe deeply for a couple of minutes while the others unload the surfboards. There are only a couple of other surfers out, though Sehun guesses more will arrive as the work day ends. When Jongin has gone a more healthy colour again, they carry the boards down to the beach. Sehun shows Jongin how to attach the longboard’s leash to his ankle, tethering it so that it won’t escape when he inevitably falls off.

“You and Sehun head out,” Yoochun says to Mikyung. “I’ll give Jongin a beginner’s lesson.”

“Oh I don’t want to bother you. Sehun already said he would teach me,” Jongin protests.

“Wouldn’t offer if it bothered me,” Yoochun grins. “I like teaching. Let Mikyung and Sehun rip it up out the back. You stick with me and we’ll play with the shorebreak.”

Sehun hesitates. He knows Jongin will be fine, but he did promise to teach him. He doesn’t want to just abandon him like this.

Jongin shrugs at him and grins.

“If Yoochun really doesn’t mind, I’m cool if you want to do some real surfing,” he says.

“Come on,” Mikyung grabs the hand that doesn’t have a surfboard tucked under it. “Yoochun really does like teaching. He teaches local kids for free on the weekends.”

He’s also giving Sehun a chance to surf with Mikyung alone. Sehun ratchets up another point in Yoochun’s favour, his attempts to hold a grudge slipping away like sand between his fingers. The afternoon sun is striking across the water, a cool offshore breeze plays with his hair, and the air smells like salt water and hot sand. Nobody could be grumpy here. He runs with Mikyung out into the waves, laughing as she shrieks at the first cold splashes getting into her wetsuit.

A couple of hours of surfing later, they’re lying on their surfboards, out the back beyond the break. The sun is setting into the ocean and the whole sky is glowing. Jongin gave up an hour ago and has passed out on the beach, wrapped up in a gigantic java hoodie from the back of the ute and apparently sound asleep, because his distant figure hasn’t moved for at least half an hour. Yoochun is somewhere among the remaining surfers near the reef-break. Sehun and Mikyung have drifted a little further back, waiting for the bigger swells they can do stunts and aerials on. The swell is falling off though as night sets in, and Sehun is cold enough that he knows he only has one or two waves left in him before he’s forced to head in or risk hypothermia. Mikyung must be on the edge of her endurance too, though she hasn’t said a thing.

He rests his cheek on his surfboard and looks across the water at Mikyung. He catches her already looking at him, watching him, and her face is a rare picture of stillness. He thinks he reads some deep emotion in her eyes, something powerful and unfathomable as the ocean beneath them.

Sehun reaches out a hand across the water, and their cold fingers interlace.

Mikyung smiles at him.

“One more wave?”

Sehun grins.

“One more wave.”

### \---

Kyungsoo’s eyes are still fixed on the computer screen, but he’s stopped actually seeing the displayed images. No matter how much he tries to ignore it, the word asexuality seems to have stuck itself to the inside of his brain. It crops up at the most annoying of moments to tease him, tempt him. It draws him down a mental rabbit warren where he chases concepts endlessly, yet never seems to come to any kind of sensible conclusion.

When Yifan had told him about asexuality, Kyungsoo had wanted to dismiss it outright, and not just because Yifan would look so damn smug if Kyungsoo even gave him a hint that something he said might actually make sense. It’s a fact of biology that humans, like any other species, have a sex drive so that the species can continue. It’s a fact of society that marrying and having 2.5 children is a measure of success. Kyungsoo has never doubted that. When everyone else seems to fit into those boxes so easily and happily, the only conclusion that he can draw is that he’s the wrong one, the square peg in a round hole, the fish out of water. He’s felt like this for as long as he can remember, so it’s not exactly surprising that it carries over into his sexual and romantic desires - or utter lack of them, as the case is.

Yifan’s suggestion that it might actually be okay to feel the way he feels is strangely disconcerting. It flies in the face of everything he’s ever known. It’s tempting to believe in it, to believe that he’s not alone in this. It would be a relief on a personal level, at least. But it doesn’t solve his problems. Even if asexuality is a legitimate thing, something other people feel as well and just as okay as being straight, gay, or any one of the other multiple sexualities in the spectrum, and even if Kyungsoo decides to identify as asexual, it still doesn’t solve anything. It’s not going to magically stop his mother from wanting her son to marry and have children. Kyungsoo doesn’t feel like he has any right to ruin his mother’s happiness just because he’s abnormal; that surely makes him horribly selfish.

He doesn’t know how to make all this fit together. He’s been avoiding his parents like the plague, burying his head in the sand. Maybe if he doesn’t face up to his problems, they will all just go away. Why did stupid Yifan had to come along and upset all his ideas about what was normal and right? Kyungsoo was doing just fine with his avoidance tactics.

Kyungsoo knows that’s a lie, even to himself.

“Dr. Do?”

Kyungsoo blinks. He has three doctors looking at him with a questioning gaze and a technician with her arms crossed over her chest glaring at him. He sends them an innocent smile. What is it he’s doing? He refocuses on the screen to see the pictures. Right, aortic dissection, that’s what he’s looking for.

“So?” the anaesthesiologist asks. Kyungsoo scrolls the mouse up and down just a few images because the diagnosis is very clear.

“That’s a dissection if I’ve ever seen one,” he tells the three doctors behind him. The ED resident groans and hurries in to be with the patient. The anaesthesiologist and the intensivist share a meaningful look. “It’s a Debakey type one,” Kyungsoo tells them. “Stanford type A if you’d rather that classification. It has dissected at the ascending aorta and goes all the way to the aortic bifurcation.” That’s really uncommon for a patient this young. Not necessarily the dissection, but a type A.

“We should prep for surgery,” the intensivist says. “I’ll call the on-call cardiothoracic surgeon. Can you call the ED to get one of the trauma OR’s prepped?” The anaesthesiologist nods and they disappear into the room with the patient. Kyungsoo watches through the window as they carefully move the patient back onto the gurney. As they wheel him away, he turns back to glance at the grey tones on the screen. It really is ridiculously uncommon for a man this age to get a dissection like this. He wonders who the on-call cardiothoracic surgeon might be. Hopefully it’s not a resident, they’ll need someone with more training to tackle a dissection like this on such a young patient. With luck it will be Kim Joonmyun. Kyungsoo has heard good things about the surgeon, and more than a few awe-inspiring descriptions of how he has dramatically saved patients in the OR. If Kyungsoo ever gets a heart problem, he wants Joonmyun to operate on him.

After the dissection, radiology gets unusually slow. The afternoon drags, leaving Kyungsoo alone with his thoughts more than he’d like. He’s about to call Yifan to scold him for putting the whole asexuality thing in his head in the first place, but then he realises that doing so would be acknowledging he’s actually been thinking about it. He’s not about to let Yifan know that. Life is easier when Yifan doesn’t know he’s right about things. Not that Kyungsoo is even considering the possibility that he might be right. No sir.

He growls aloud and scrolls aggressively up and down a full length leg X-ray he’s already cleared. Stupid Wu Yifan.

4 o’clock comes a thousand years later. Kyungsoo clocks out, closes his office and shrugs his light summer jacket over his shoulders. He takes off his glasses to clean them as he heads towards the glass doors that open into the radiology department. When he pushes through the doors, a couple of people waiting on the chairs further down the hall outside stand up and wave, seemingly at him. Still not wearing his glasses, Kyungsoo shoots an intense glare at them to try and see who they are. After a second his eyes decide to humor him and actually focus, and shock stops him dead in his tracks. They’re his parents.

He puts his glasses back on to make sure he’s really seeing what he thinks he is. Yes, it’s definitely them, his father with his hands buried deep in his pockets and his mother with a big smile on her face. He’s never invited them to see his workplace, and it’s extremely disconcerting to see them here. He has a momentary but very strong impulse to act like he hasn’t seen them, turn around and go hide in his office, but he knows he can’t do that. They’re here, for whatever reason, and he’ll just have to deal with it.

“Kyungsoo!” his mother calls after he’s been standing there like a statue and staring for a few moments too long. Kyungsoo hunches his shoulders. He feels like a child again, back in middle school, his mother calling his name while everybody laughs at him. Kyungsoo needs his mother, what a mama’s boy! It crawls down his spine and he shoots a quick glance over his shoulder. There’s no one looking at them, everybody’s busy with whatever they’re doing and nobody cares one bit, yet still Kyungsoo feels embarrassed by their presence. He hurries towards them.

“What are you doing here?” he hisses. It’s rude, but Kyungsoo doesn’t like them here. This is his place. They don’t belong here.

“We thought we’d pick you up before going to grandma’s grave,” his mother says. “Now you don’t have to take the subway all the way over to our place first.” She smiles and reaches out to take his hand. Kyungsoo lets her, his heart plummeting right down into his shoes. He’d completely forgotten. His father’s mother died five years ago, and ever since then they’ve been visiting her grave three times a year; at Chuseok, at Seollal, and on the date of her death - which is today. He doesn’t know if his parents visit more often, but they only require Kyungsoo to be there on those three occasions. His mother watches him, warm hand still holding onto his. There’s something in her eyes he doesn’t often see; they’re softer than usual, strangely vulnerable. He knows he’s been more distant than ever lately, more resistant to spending time with them. She’s probably worried that he’ll refuse to come. That will be why they’ve come to pick him up, making it harder for him to get out of it.

Kyungsoo sighs, his initial anger fading into the inevitable guilt. He’s never been the son she deserves. It’s not her fault he’s like this. He gently pulls his hand away, takes a step back and buries his hands in his pockets.

“You should’ve called,” he says, avoiding her eyes. “What if I’d missed you?”

His mother opens her mouth, doubtless to justify all her reasons for showing up at Kyungsoo’s workplace with no warning, but his father gets in first. “Let’s just go,” he says, and his mother shuts her mouth, the fight in her eyes dying out. It’s not very common that his father bothers to take an interest in what’s going on, but when he does, his mother generally listens to him.

Kyungsoo trails after them, follows them into the elevator and stares at the floor as his mother chatters to his father about all the things they’re about to do for grandma. Kyungsoo knows they’ve been discussing ijang for a while - his mother wants to relocate her grave. Kyungsoo respected his grandmother and he knows tradition is important to the family, but he does not believe changing the location of his grandmother’s grave is going to have any effect on this supposed family misfortune his mother seems to have gotten obsessed with.

She goes on and on about it while they leave the hospital and cross the car park. Kyungsoo doesn’t understand where she’s gotten this idea that the family is suffering from bad luck. His parents aren’t ill, don’t have financial trouble and are well-liked in their neighborhood, so what misfortune could she possibly be talking about? He starts to tune out, but a few moments later he catches the word single.

Ah. His mother is talking about him.

The feeling that washes over Kyungsoo then is something close to despair. He rocks with it, something clenching deep in his gut. God, when will it end? He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to be with them. They will never understand him. And how can they, really, when Kyungsoo doesn’t even understand himself?

He wants to lie about an emergency call, go back into work and hide in his office for the rest of the evening, but instead he just keeps following them, the weight of it dragging at his bones. His mother doesn’t turn around to address him directly, just continues on her way towards the car, talking non-stop about things like inauspicious directions and malevolent spirits. Kyungsoo finds his steps slowing against his will, so that he’s several metres behind them by the time they reach the car.

“Come along!” his mother calls impatiently as she gets into the passenger side.

Kyungsoo climbs into the back seat and slouches down, staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He feels like a child again. Small, irrelevant, and completely powerless.

The grave mound is located in a burial ground an hour’s drive away. It’s right outside the city with beautiful fields surrounding it and mountains in the far off distance. The landscapes pass them by as busy city becomes laidback suburb only to become fields and trees for miles on end. There’s a cooler on the seat next to him and Kyungsoo, mainly out of boredom, sneaks a look inside. There are the usual chestnuts, carved so they can be stacked on the grave, and a variety of fruit. He spies the songpyeon his grandmother loved so dearly in the corner before he lowers the lid and sits back again.

His mother’s dedication to the old folk traditions surrounding burial confuses Kyungsoo. It’s not at all in the Christian faith she brought him up in and applies to every other aspect of her life. When he was in middle school he questioned it, and was told the spirits of the ancestors were important to care for like this. There was no room for discussion - that was just how it was. Even now, he still doesn’t really understand how she can believe so strongly in two such opposite practices at the same time. He came to the conclusion long ago that it was least confusing to just not believe in anything, so he supposes it shouldn’t really matter to him, but it’s still disconcerting, and he doesn’t like having to think about it.

His father parks near the entrance to the burial grounds. It’s a large area of land and it will take half an hour to walk to Kyungsoo’s grandmother’s mound. Some mounds are already visible nearby, some overgrown and others neatly clipped and pruned. Beolcho is in about two months, so when he comes again for Chuseok in September, everything will be pruned and weeded. He’s never seen anybody else at the burial grounds, not even when he helped his father cut the grass on the family mounds during Beolcho when he was a kid. Nowadays he doesn’t come to help at Beolcho. He’s almost always working and his parents understand the importance of his work.

Kyungsoo’s father gets out a small table from the trunk and a bottle of rice wine. Kyungsoo carries the heavy cooler. The grass cracks under their feet as they walk through the different family sites. Half an hour later they stop in front of a grave mound covered with brown grass. This summer really has taken a toll on the grass, it seems. It could use a little rain. Unfortunately for his grandmother, none of them has brought actual water for the grass. The skies will have to deal with that. Kyungsoo’s father sets down the table in front of the grave mound and his mother immediately starts unpacking the food to set the table. Everything is meticulously placed to either west or east in clean rows of four with two candles on either side and incense in the middle.

“Do you have the prayers?” his mother asks his father. Kyungsoo takes a step back. If they’re about to start the kangshin, he knows he’s not to be right in front of the table. His father hands over the thin paper and she places it in the middle before she, too, stands up and takes another step back. Kyungsoo watches his father prepare for the ritual, and his mother takes his hand.

Kyungsoo feels strange. Almost dissociated. He has always accepted the fact that he has to be at the ceremonies and just got on with them without thinking about them much, but today he feels separate. He doesn’t belong here, in this rural burial ground on the side of a hill, dead grass poking at his ankles and hot blue sky above, heat shimmers rippling at the corners of his eyes so that he continually wants to twitch around and fix his eyes on something that isn’t there. He is not a creature of this place.

Kyungsoo doesn’t think he believes the ancestral spirits are watching over them. He would like to say he is sure. But he’s not sure, not really. Not in places like this, where the land is so ancient that history seeps up out of the ground like a physical thing and swirls around him, clings to him like an invisible veil. He doesn’t like it here. It’s too old. Too full of memory.

What do the ancient spirits of his family think of him? Doubtless they’d say he doesn’t deserve to be here, celebrating his ancestors and his grandmother who worked so hard for the family, when all he’s doing is killing the family line. Now it’s gotten to the point where his lack of a wife is a family misfortune. His stomach lurches, and he must have given some outward sign of distress, because his mother turns to look at him, a worried question in her eyes.

Kyungsoo shakes his head. No, he’s fine, there’s no need to worry. His mother squeezes his hand a little, and he wonders what she is thinking of him. He knows she loves him, even though she doesn’t understand him. She thinks that finding Kyungsoo a wife will somehow fix him, make him okay. Make him normal, like his peers from Sunday school who are all grown up and married now, some with children of their own. She wants him to be happy, and she thinks that being like everyone else will make him so.

Kyungsoo does not know how he can break it to her that the thing making him unhappy is the one thing she wants most in the world.

The ritual continues. His father offers rice wine. His mother steps up to offer next. They bow and Kyungsoo steps forward so he too can offer rice wine, as the next eldest son in line. He bows twice and sits up, and the ritual moves on. There are no other important men in the family line to offer rice wine because his father doesn’t have any brothers, only a sister who lives overseas, and Kyungsoo is an only child. He wonders what they would’ve done if he’d been a girl. Would the rituals have become less important? Would they have decided the eldest female descendant carried as much importance as the eldest male descendant? Would he, as a daughter, have been forced to marry a man who could take on the ritual in his place? He shudders at the thought. It’s easier being a single man in this world than it is a single woman. All the pressure he feels would’ve been doubled if he had been a woman.

Kyungsoo forces himself to pay attention to the ritual. His father is offering the spoon to the spirits and Kyungsoo turns his back to the grave as he’s supposed to. If they had been at home they would have left the room to let his grandmother’s spirit eat some of the food she’s been offered, but they’re not and the best they can do is turn their backs to the grave. As the minutes slowly pass, Kyungsoo glances at his parents next to him. His mother has her eyes closed and hands folded, praying. His father just stands there, looking out over the fields of grave mounds, silent and stoic. Kyungsoo looks out at the fields too, and feels that sense of disconnect again. It’s like something inside himself is trying to detach and float away. He wonders what would happen if he let it.

When two minutes are up, Kyungsoo’s father clears his throat twice and they all turn back around to face the grave. A small cup of chestnut tea is offered to his grandmother before they recite the prayer written on the paper together. The paper is burnt in the air, the ashes blowing over the grave mounds and towards the trees. Kyungsoo watches them go until the clanking of plates and cups interferes with his thoughts. He looks down to find his parents cleaning off the table and packing it away. All that’s left now is to eat the food and drink the rice wine. He sits down in the grass next to his mother and she hands him a slice of apple.

“Eat up,” she tells him and pats his head. Kyungsoo shakes his hair to put it back into place. He doesn’t like feeling like a small child, but his mother has this incredible gift of making him feel small.

“Let him be, Heesun,” his father says and she scoffs at him. Kyungsoo can hear the argument building in the air but it doesn’t come. Instead she hands his father a cup of rice wine and settles to eat a slice of pear.

The brown grass quickly starts poking its way through his trousers and Kyungsoo shifts his position. His parents are eating and drinking the rest of the offerings. Kyungsoo nibbles his apple slice slowly and watches them. He doesn’t feel like eating at all, but he knows he has to at least partake in some of the ritual food. He changes his position again when the grass pokes his knees and his incessant moving has both his parents look at him disapprovingly.

“Will you sit still?” his mother asks and hands him another piece of fruit. Kyungsoo takes it reluctantly, but can’t sit still for more than a few seconds before the grass bothers him again. He stands up, and his parents look at him, his mother frowning.

“The grass is like needles,” he explains. His mother sighs heavily. Kyungsoo turns slightly away. He doesn’t have to sit down and be uncomfortable just because his mother wants him to. He isn’t a child anymore. The afternoon sun slants across the brown fields and stings his eyes. He pushes his hands into his pockets and stares as close to it as he can get without risking damaging his retinas. He lets himself drift, until the rice wine has been drunk and the leftover food is packed into the cooler.

Back at the car, Kyungsoo takes the back seat again. He buckles up and leans his head against the window. Nobody says anything until they’re out on the main road, driving back towards Seoul. He should ask to be dropped off at his apartment so he doesn’t have to commute back home, but the silence feels so heavy right now, and being the one to break it feels impossible.

“Do you know what I prayed for?” his mother asks after several long minutes. She meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “I prayed that you’d find a nice young woman soon -”

Kyungsoo flinches.

“Heesun,” his father interrupts before she can get any further. “Let Kyungsoo be. You’ve been pressuring him enough.”

His mother sends a look at her husband.

“He has not been capable of finding one on his own. What’s wrong with asking your mother for a little assistance?”

“He is perfectly capable of doing this on his own if he wants a partner.”

Kyungsoo feels his mother glance at him. He stares fixedly out of the side window.

“What do you mean, if he wants a partner?” she asks.

“Your incessant nagging could be making him defiant.”

Kyungsoo feels sick. He’s 31 years old and they’re arguing over him like he’s a child, like he isn’t even there. Defiant, he thinks bitterly. Like he’s going through some stupid rebellious phase.

Kyungsoo’s mother scoffs.

“I am not nagging! I’m helping him. He sits in front of his computer all day and the hospital calls him all the time. He’ll never meet anyone if I don’t intervene.”

“He’s still young. He has plenty of time to find someone when he is ready,” his father says, unusually firmly. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it today.”

His mother mumbles something unintelligible, but the argument dies with the tone of his father’s voice. It’s rare for him to voice an opinion, let alone put his foot down like this.

Silence presides in the car once again. Kyungsoo watches as the fields are slowly replaced by suburbs. When they cross the first large intersection, Kyungsoo is thrust out of his head.

“Dad, can you drop me off at my apartment?” he asks. He gets a small nod from his father and his mother turns in her seat to look at him.

“Don’t you want to have dinner with us tonight?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “I have to prepare something for work tomorrow.” It’s a lie, but he doesn’t care. He’s had enough of her today; had enough of both of them. He does love his parents, but they don’t make it easy for him.

When they reach Kyungsoo’s neighborhood, his mother turns to him again, just to make sure he really doesn’t want to have dinner with them. Kyungsoo sticks to his lie. He can’t, has to work, it’s very important. In fact, he does have something important he wants to do, but it isn’t work. The car slows down in front of his apartment complex and stops.

Kyungsoo opens the car door, looks towards his father.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and gets out before his mother can decide to protest one more time.

Safe in his apartment, Kyungsoo changes out of his stuffy shirt and into an oversized hoodie. The air conditioning is set to high, protecting his apartment from the summer heat outside, and he keeps the lights dim. His apartment is his sanctuary. Soothing. Safe. He sits down on the cool leather couch and curls himself up into the corner of it. He closes his eyes and lets the quiet and calm of his own space seep into him, washing away the weight of expectations that belong to the world outside.

Around half an hour later, when he’s feeling better, he opens his eyes and picks up his phone from where he dropped it on the arm of the couch. He taps at the screen with his thumb, finding the contact for the only friend he can imagine talking to in this situation.

“Hey Yifan,” he says when the phone is picked up. “Want to come over and play Minecraft? I have some things I want to ask you."


	30. June 21st

The dark wooden door to the outer hall opens, and Minseok looks up from where he’s sitting on one of the leather couches in Yifan’s waiting room. His ex-wife walks in, the clicking of her heels on the tiled floor outside becoming muted as she steps onto the soft green carpet. Jangmi’s eyes flash across the waiting room, seeing him immediately, but she turns to the receptionist before acknowledging him. She gives her name and stands at the tall desk to fill out the form she’s handed.

Minseok watches her, watches the way the bones in the back of her hand flex as she writes, hand moving swiftly and surely across the paper. She’s left-handed, like Eunbi. She’s like their younger daughter in other ways too, in her thinness, in her height. In bare feet they’re the exact same height, but Jangmi usually wears heels. He takes in her profile, clear as her hair is drawn back from her face in a professional bun. She looks older than she does in his mind, in his memories. Of course, she is 35 now, the same age as Minseok, and Minseok knows he is lucky in his genes, his baby-face still putting him at a glance in his mid-twenties despite the fine lines beginning to appear around his eyes. The years are more visible on Jangmi, the youthful plumpness to her cheeks replaced by sharp cheekbones and a knife-edge jaw. It suits her, Minseok thinks. She is beautiful. She always was.

Jangmi hands back the form and turns towards him. Their eyes meet, and Jangmi walks across the small waiting room. She takes a seat on the couch set at a right-angle to his, in the nearer corner, so that they’re close physically but not actually sharing space. She crosses thin legs one over the other, and her black stockings go a little sheer over her kneecaps. She places her handbag calmly beside her.

“Hello, Minseok.”

“Hi, Jangmi,” Minseok says. He tries for a smile. It comes out even more lopsided than usual. “Thanks for coming.”

A couple of weeks ago, Yifan had asked Minseok to ask Jangmi to come to one of his therapy sessions. His psychologist thinks that it would be helpful for them to discuss the incident together, and also to look at how they want to move forward in a neutral environment. Considering that the whole therapy thing was Jangmi’s idea in the first place, Minseok hadn’t been too worried that she would refuse, and he’d been right - Jangmi had agreed willingly enough to come along. He is worried, though, nerves making his palms sweat again in a way they haven’t done before therapy for weeks. He’s worried about Yifan seeing how hard it is for him and Jangmi to communicate like the rational adults they both are in any other situation, and he’s worried about Jangmi seeing him in the extremely vulnerable state he’s been struggling with ever since Yifan got him to explain the incident. There hasn’t been a single session in which Minseok hasn’t cried. It’s like years and years of repressed grief have all been stored up, and now it pours out of him at any opportunity it gets. He doesn’t want to break down in front of Jangmi, but he doesn’t trust himself to be able not to.

Perhaps things will be better this time, he thinks with little hope, as they sit in silence in the waiting room. Perhaps he will not cry this time. He stares emptily at the artwork on the opposite wall, while Jangmi taps at her digital planner in his peripheral vision. The artwork is a Degas reproduction. Minseok hadn’t known that when he first came here, but he’d looked it up after several weeks spent staring at the depicted ballet dancers in white practice skirts intently tying their shoe-ribbons and preparing themselves for what’s to come.

Yifan appears to call them through. Minseok stands, watches as Yifan approaches Jangmi and introduces himself and shakes her hand. If Jangmi is intimidated by Yifan’s height and severe features the way Minseok had been, she doesn’t show it. She probably isn’t intimidated at all, Minseok thinks as he follows them both through to Yifan’s room. She spends her days in courts having verbal battles with other lawyers and doing cross-examinations on witnesses. Not much intimidates Jangmi.

Yifan has moved the seating arrangement in his room a little, to allow for a third armchair so that they are sitting in an evenly-spaced circle. Yifan’s chair is close enough to his desk that he can reach a hardback notebook without getting up. He places in his lap and flips open to about midway through. Minseok glances at it as he sits down. Yifan doesn’t usually take notes during their sessions. He glimpses that the neat black handwriting on the page is in English, not Korean, or even Chinese as he might have expected Yifan’s preferred language to be.

Yifan is thanking Jangmi for coming, and Minseok forces himself to focus on what’s going on.

“Minseok told me at our first session that it was your idea for him to see a therapist,” Yifan is saying. “He explained that you told him this was the only way you wouldn’t sue for custody of your two daughters.”

“Yes,” Jangmi says clearly, nodding as she does. “That’s right.”

“Could you explain what it was that pushed you to that point?”

“I just got so damn sick of it,” Jangmi says. “Constantly having to reassure the girls that it wasn’t their fault, that he did love them, even when I wasn’t even sure of that myself. I tried to give him a chance to get his act together, I tried to be patient and understand that he was grieving, but every year he got worse, not better. He worked constantly, he’d disappear for months at a time without contact, then show up out of the blue looking so exhausted I thought he’d collapse where he stood. It was so bad for the girls. They never knew when they’d get to see their father. I’ve tried and failed for seven years to get through to him, so I knew I had to do something drastic. So I threatened him with custody. By then, I wasn’t even sure that that would work. He was so distant with the girls I thought maybe he’d just give up on them too.”

“This was very frustrating for you,” Yifan says, and Jangmi nods, looking relieved.

“Yes, very frustrating. I didn’t want to sue for custody, but I would have if he hadn’t agreed to try therapy. It was for the sake of the girls. I felt like I had no other choice.”

“Minseok,” Yifan says. Minseok jumps. “What do you think about what Jangmi has just said?”

“I think she has a point,” Minseok says. It feels hard to speak. He always feels like this when he has to talk honestly, like he’s a rusty machine badly in need of oiling. He can’t look directly at Jangmi, or at Yifan. “Now, at least. But I was angry when she suggested it originally. I didn’t think I had a problem with working. I thought she just wanted to take the girls away from me too.”

Jangmi gives him an unreadable look. “You mean, out of spite?”

Minseok shakes his head. He feels so stiff he’s almost surprised he doesn’t creak.

“Maybe a little out of spite,” he says. “But mostly, because you thought I was such a bad father, and that...that I didn’t deserve to have children. Any children. Like...a punishment.”

“Minseok, do you think you deserve to be punished that way?” Yifan asks.

“Yes,” Minseok says.

“Why?”

“Because -” Minseok’s voice does that croaking, cracking thing that it does when he’s about to cry. Yifan knows it well enough by now that he’s passing Minseok the tissue box on his desk even before the tears start to fall down his face. Minseok grabs a handful of them and presses them hard against his eyes. He can sense Jangmi staring at him. “Fuck. I didn’t want to do this today.”

“He never cries,” Jangmi says. She sounds dazed. “Never.”

“Keep going, Minseok,” Yifan says. He sounds as calm as ever.

“Because it was my fault,” Minseok says, in his pathetic, wavering, cracking voice. He hates it so much, hates how much it exposes his raw insides. “Jangmi thinks so too. If I’d been more aware, if I’d been watching him instead of working…” the tears are coming too fast to speak through. “Sorry,” he chokes. “Give me a moment.”

“Jangmi, do you think what happened to your son is Minseok’s fault?”

There’s a short silence, broken only by Minseok’s pathetic attempts to hold back his tears.

“Yes,” Jangmi says eventually. “I do.”

It’s nothing Minseok didn’t expect. It’s almost a relief to hear her say it so plainly. He knows it’s possible to distort things and assign self-blame that doesn’t belong to him. They’ve discussed it, him and Yifan. Logically Minseok does know that the accident was just that - an accident. But Jangmi is an intelligent woman, and she blames him, and it’s just so easy, so very, very easy to blame himself too.

“Why?”

“It’s like he said.” Jangmi says. “He wasn’t aware. He was working in the kitchen, it was easier for him to keep an eye on things than me from the office. If he’d noticed things going quiet, Ilsung wouldn’t have been oxygen-deprived for so long. If he’d listened to Nayoung right away instead of sending her to me, when he knew I was busy, even that might have been enough time to save him.”

Minseok gets control of his tears enough to take the tissues from his face and lift his head. Damn this fucking grief, he thinks as he swallows, hating that he has to let Yifan and Jangmi see his face when he’s been crying.

“Minseok, do you agree with Jangmi’s reasons?”

Minseok nods.

Yifan is actually writing in his notebook. Minseok has never seen him do that before. He watches Yifan’s pen jot swiftly along the faint blue line. He can’t see what he’s writing. After a moment, Yifan lifts his head again.

“Finding someone to blame - and then blaming them - sometimes makes us feel that we’ve solved a problem,” Yifan says. “In this case, both of you have assigned blame to your son’s accident. In that way, you’ve achieved a sense of completion. Jangmi, it sounds like after the accident, you had to take on full care of your younger children.”

Jangmi nods. “Yes, I did. Minseok left me to do everything. All he’d ever do was work, and I had a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old to look after as well as dealing with my own grief over Ilsung and trying to stay in my career. Minseok locked himself away. He’d never speak to me, never do a thing with the girls, like we didn’t even exist. Even when we were going through the divorce, he never fought. He didn’t even try to save our marriage. He just passively took everything, like he didn’t even care.”

“Let’s look at that from the perspective of blame,” Yifan says. “If blaming a person for a situation enables the blamer to move on and deal with vital tasks, like raising younger children, what do you think might happen if the person blames themselves?”

He’s asking both of them. There’s a short silence. Minseok’s chest hurts. The tears want to rise up again. He shoves them down. Yifan usually tells him to let the emotions run their course, but he needs to stay present today.

Jangmi is pressing her lips together. “I suppose if we follow that line of reasoning through, I had someone to blame, so I could move on. Minseok had only himself to blame, so he couldn’t.”

Yifan nods. “From what I’ve heard from Minseok, and from you today, Jangmi, it sounds to me like this situation of blame and self-blame has really caused a lot of suffering for both of you. We have Jangmi having to cope with her bereavement and with caring for her daughters with no support from Minseok, and we have Minseok having to cope with his trauma on his own.” Yifan glances at Minseok. “Could you explain to Jangmi what began to happen to you when you thought of the accident?”

Minseok shudders. “What if I…”

“You are safe here,” Yifan reminds him, again, for at least the tenth time. The man’s patience must be infinite, Minseok thinks, somewhere within his distress. “If you re-experience here, nothing bad will happen.”

“Re-experience?” Jangmi repeats.

“I have post-traumatic stress disorder,” Minseok says. It’s the first time he’s ever admitted it aloud. The words seem to hang in the room, in the sudden silence. He breathes in shakily. “Whenever - whenever I thought of…” Ilsung, his son, his baby, the accident, Ilsung with the plastic bag over his face, sucked over his mouth where he’d tried to breathe, and Minseok feels a bolt of white horror strike him, and he’s across the room and on his knees, tearing the bag from Ilsung’s face -

Pressure on his shoulder.

“Minseok?”

He blinks. The room. Yifan. He’s stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of him without Minseok being aware of it. His hand is squeezing Minseok’s shoulder hard. It’s a way to break him out of the flashback. They’d agreed to the physical intervention a while ago.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m here.”

“Can you continue?” Yifan lets go of him and steps back. Instead of sitting down, he leans against his desk, watching Minseok carefully from beneath his severe eyebrows.

“Yes,” Minseok says. He’s started now, and there’s almost no stopping it, like a snowball rolling down a slope and gathering speed and momentum all the time. “I...every time I’d think of it, I’d relive it. Completely. Not like a memory, like I’m really there. I have no awareness of the present. I can’t tell that anything outside of the memory exists. And it’s so awful. I have to keep seeing it...keep seeing him with the...doing CPR...and failing...over and over…” he’s crying again, God damn it. He dashes the tears from his cheeks angrily. “So I worked. I worked so hard I was too tired to think of anything else. I worked all the time so that my mind was filled with patients and cases, so that I could always back off and distract myself with something else important, something else life-threatening. Because I couldn’t keep experiencing those flashbacks. They were tearing me apart. I really think I would have actually gone insane.” He takes a shaky breath. “Even the girls would trigger it. They reminded me too much of him. I couldn’t even look at them, Jangmi. And so. After a while I got pretty good at distancing myself. I could even look at photographs of him and miss him at a distance without getting sucked into it. Then I came to my first therapy session, and it was the first time I’d tried to actually talk about it, and - I had the worst flashback I’d had for years. It wasn’t gone. I’d just learned how to avoid it. Only it turns out that in PTSD, avoidance just makes it worse.”

“Minseok, I - fuck.” Jangmi sounds half angry, half distressed. “That’s - I never - how could you -” she stops and takes a controlled breath, visibly gathering herself together. “Why didn’t you tell me that was happening to you?”

Minseok gives a choking laugh. “I was too scared to talk about it. I couldn’t bring myself to even _think_ about it, so I ran away. I’m not proud of it, Jangmi. But that’s what I did.”

There’s a silence, during which Minseok wipes his face with his tissues and Jangmi sits in her chair, looking shocked. Yifan breaks it by speaking again.

“How do you feel about what Minseok has just told you, Jangmi?”

“I - I’m shocked.” Jangmi shakes her head. “I had no idea.” She turns back to Minseok. “I still don’t think it’s an excuse for what you did. You don’t get to just blame everything on PTSD or something and get out of taking responsibility that way.”

“I know,” Minseok says. “I made terrible decisions about how to deal with all this. I’m not trying to make it an excuse, I’m just telling you what happened. But I want to do better now. That’s why I’m here, Jangmi. I am trying.”

Jangmi closes her mouth tightly. She looks tight all over, half-angry, half-upset.

“You could have tried harder back then,” she mutters.

Minseok closes his eyes. Yes, he knows he did wrong. But he can’t change the past. If there’s one thing he knows from all this, it’s that he can’t change the past, no matter how desperately he wants to.

When the silence has stretched for a while, Jangmi says, “About the blame thing. I feel like Minseok and I are talking about different things. I want him to step up and fix the problems of right now, the ones he caused by going distant on me, and he’s still stuck in the problem of Ilsung’s accident. That’s why it’s so hard for us to communicate. He can’t seem to get his head out of the accident and look at what needs to be done to make things work now. Is it because his self-blame is trapping him in the past?” She looks up at Yifan leaning on the desk.

Yifan gives his non-committal hum. He almost always does that, if Minseok asks direct questions like that.

“What do you think about that idea, Minseok?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I mean...I get that it was an accident. Logically I can see that. I just don’t know how I can ever stop blaming myself. And so, I can’t see how Jangmi can, either.”

“You see?” Jangmi sits up straighter, her voice rising. “I’m trying to talk about now, about our living children who need him, and he’s still talking about Ilsung! Don’t you get it, Minseok?”

Minseok shivers. He gets it, he thinks, but...

“Minseok, can you try and think about this from the perspective I gave you earlier?” Yifan asks. His voice is unusually gentle. “Assigning blame can make us feel that we’ve understood and solved a situation. To move on and be present for your daughters like Jangmi wishes, like I believe you do want, you’re going to have to let go of the blame. That means you have to accept that maybe there is no way to understand and solve what happened to Ilsung. You have to accept that you had no control of it, and you never did. That’s what accidents are.”

Jesus fucking Christ, Minseok is going to cry again. He buries his face in another handful of tissues.

“You know, apart from right afterwards, in the hospital, I never saw you cry,” Jangmi says. “Sometimes I wondered if you even cared.”

Minseok feels that like a knife in his chest. He has to breathe a few times before he can reply. “Because I couldn’t let myself feel enough to cry. I’d never get that far even if I did. I’d re-experience first.”

Another silence.

“I’m sorry,” Minseok says after a while. “I never intended to leave you on your own like that, but I can see now that that’s what I did.”

“Yes, well. You being sorry now doesn’t just magically make up for me having to put up with seven years of you being a total asshole, Minseok.” Jangmi looks away from him, turns to Yifan. “I don’t get it. Why did he get PTSD over this? I was there too. I went through everything just as much as he did, and I had to get on with life. I didn’t get to ignore my responsibilities and hide from everything like he did.”

“PTSD is a psychiatric disorder,” Yifan says. “It wasn’t a choice Minseok made or something he could control. It means he was never able to process and adjust for the experience he went through. Instead of things getting better over time, as happens to most people, for Minseok, they got worse. You sensed this, Jangmi, when you told me at the start of the session that you saw him getting worse every year. Forcing Minseok to get help was the right thing to do.”

“Is he going to get better?” Jangmi asks.

“I am getting better,” Minseok says. He gestures wryly to his damp face. “Apparently all this crying is a good sign, though it seems kind of backwards to me.”

“You are processing the emotions you’ve repressed in a normal way,” Yifan tells him. “Crying is a normal response to grief. As we work through this, you'll be able to move on. You’ve already made amazing progress to get to the point of allowing yourself to feel these very strong emotions. You should be proud of that.”

“I really am sorry, Jangmi,” Minseok says again. “I was an awful husband, an awful father. If I could change what I did back then, I would.”

“Okay,” Jangmi says, and sighs. “I believe that you do regret it, Minseok. Thank you for acknowledging that.”

Yifan asks if they’re both okay with leaving the topic of the past for now and discussing how they can make things work better in the present, and they both agree.

“So, in an ideal world, Jangmi, what would you like to see from Minseok?” Yifan asks.

“Reliability,” Jangmi says immediately. “More of what he’s been showing me in the past couple of months, really. It’s already a good start, if we can keep on like this. I want specified times where he always takes the girls, maybe regular weekends or evenings. I know that’s hard with emergency department shifts, but,” she turns to Minseok, “I also know you’re the department chief and you’re in control of your rostering. I want you to put the girls first by making it so that when you’re scheduled off-shift, even if something happens - barring a natural disaster or something, of course - you delegate, send in a junior staff member instead of going in yourself.”

“Do you think that’s fair, Minseok?”

“Yes,” Minseok says. It’s going to be hard to take such a big step back, but he wants to put his family first, now, and that’s going to make all the difference in actually doing it.

“Is there anything you would like to see from Jangmi?”

Minseok thinks. “Not really. I think she’s done a pretty amazing job already. If she’s willing to accept that I’m doing my best to change, that’s enough for me.”

\---

Joonmyun wakes up to socked feet tiptoeing over the wooden floor. Closet doors open and close quietly and Yejin’s jewelry box gives a small click as it’s unlocked. In his sleepy haze, Joonmyun first wonders if there are thieves going through their apartment before he wakes up a little more and realises that it’s probably Yejin, not thieves. He opens his eyes and squints towards the sound. The shadow that moves around in their dark bedroom sure looks like his wife. She leaves the bedroom and closes the door softly behind her.

Joonmyun rolls over and gets caught in the blanket. Instead of kicking the blanket away, he closes his eyes again. It has to be super early and she will come to wake him up soon enough. He can’t be late for work, but he’s tired after a couple of bad on-call shifts. He falls asleep again immediately.

Thirty minutes later he’s woken by the press of her lips to his cheek. His eyes flutter open and he sends her a tired smile.

“Is it morning already?” he whispers. Yejin shakes her head.

“Yejoon is still sleeping, so you can sleep until he wakes up. I won’t be home until dinner.”

Joonmyun wrinkles his forehead and squints at her, but he can’t come up with the reason she’ll be so late. Yejin laughs softly and uses her fingers to flatten out the wrinkles.

“It’s the field trip today, remember?”

Joonmyun nods as her words finally spark his memory. He’s off work today and will look after Yejoon. Yejin has just started teaching at the primary school again now that Yejoon is 6 months old. She usually just does mornings, but the field trip will take up the whole day. Yejin gets up from the bed to kiss Yejoon goodbye in his cot and Joonmyun suddenly becomes much more awake as the implications strike him. His fear of SIDS lessened as Yejoon grew older, but there are still so many things that could go wrong. Without Yejin there to calm him down, it all suddenly feels very overwhelming.

There’s no way he can sleep again now that his anxiety’s started up. He gets out of bed and walks over to the cot. Yejoon is sleeping soundly. Joonmyun gently lifts him from under the covers, careful not to wake him. Instead of going into the living room, Joonmyun settles back in bed and places the pillows behind him so he can sit up, Yejoon lying on his thighs on top of the covers. He sniffles and Joonmyun sends him a smile.

The last couple of weeks have been hard. Yejoon has started moving around on his stomach, worming his way over the floor like only babies can and keeping track of him has suddenly gotten a lot harder. It won’t be long before he gets on all fours and starts crawling. Joonmyun will have to baby-proof the apartment soon, make sure there is nowhere small fingers can get caught and nothing he can easily grab and pull down on top of him. Yejin’s colleagues had come over a couple of evenings ago to prepare for the field trip and stayed for dinner. One of them had asked if they were planning on adding another baby to the family any time soon. Yejin had laughed, and Joonmyun had gone pale. But the idea had settled quickly, and now it doesn’t feel like such a terrifying thing. He’s growing more confident in his role as a father and even though his anxiety still spikes from time to time, he believes he can do this. He can be a father that Yejoon will be proud of and love. There is so much love to give in his heart and sometimes - like right now - Joonmyun feels like bursting with it.

An hour later, when Joonmyun has fallen into a light slumber in his upright position, Yejoon starts fussing in his sleep. It takes another five minutes before the boy wakes up completely with a cry and Joonmyun startles fully awake. A brief glance at the alarm clock in their bedroom says eight thirty in the morning. Joonmyun lifts the crying boy from his lap and changes him, during which process Yejoon stops crying. When Yejoon is clean and dressed in the babygro and soft dungarees Yejin left out, he picks him up and carries him into the kitchen, where he slides him into the high chair, ties a bib on to protect his clothes, and gives him a bottle. They started him on solids a few weeks ago but he still gets a bottle every now and then.

While Yejoon suckles on his bottle, Joonmyun grabs a plastic plate, a banana and a plastic knife. Yejoon empties his bottle quickly and starts fussing again, still hungry. Joonmyun sits at the table and starts to cut the banana into thick slices, thick enough to grab onto. Yejoon reaches for them, trying to get to his food before Joonmyun is finished. When he finally gets his hands on the banana slices, he giggles and smiles, eyes like crescent moons and joy in his entire body. Joonmyun smiles back and watches as his son grabs two slices and eats from both fists. The happy babbles from the high chair has Joonmyun decide to make some breakfast for himself. He cuts some banana and kiwifruit into a bowl, pours yoghurt over the top, and eats it slowly, watching Yejoon smear as much banana over his face and hands as he gets in his mouth.

When they’re both finished with breakfast Joonmyun wipes his son down and cleans up, feeling rather accomplished with the morning’s efforts so far. He’s halfway through rinsing the dishes when Yejoon starts to wriggle, wanting out of the high chair, and Joonmyun lifts him out and goes to lie him in the lounge area under the play gym. Yejoon bats excitedly at the hanging toys and Joonmyun goes back into the kitchen to finish rinsing the dishes. He can still see and hear Yejoon because of the open-plan layout of their kitchen and lounge.

He’s just stacking the dishes into the rack when Yejoon gives a surprised cry. Joonmyun’s head shoots up and he sees that in the space of possibly ten seconds since he last glanced up, Yejoon has squirmed out from under the play gym and gotten halfway across the lounge. He’s lying on his front on the rug with a startled expression on his face. Joonmyun drops the last dish into the rack and hurries over.

“How are you so quick?” he asks Yejoon rhetorically, picking him up with the intention of putting him in the baby bouncer, where he can move about and Joonmyun won’t have to worry about him going exploring. As he picks him up, Yejoon’s face wrinkles and he starts to cry. Joonmyun looks at him in surprise, because Yejoon isn’t really a crier unless he’s hungry.

There’s something in Yejoon’s nose. Joonmyun stares at it uncomprehendingly for a second. Something round and smooth and white, wedged firmly in Yejoon’s left nostril. It looks like a white bead or a pearl to Joonmyun. Joonmyun feels like time slows down around him, a bubble of horror growing in his chest. That was definitely not there before. How the heck could Yejoon have gotten a pearl stuck up his nose in the last ten seconds? Where did the pearl even come from? He doesn’t remember Yejin losing any pearls. Could it have been one of the visiting colleagues a few days ago?

He’s startled out of his immediate panic as Yejoon cries harder. Anxiety crawls through Joonmyun as he backs towards the couch, making him feel cold and shaky. He’s aware that young children have a strange penchant for shoving objects in strange places but this is a 6-month-old baby, not even crawling. Yejoon must have just grabbed the pearl and shoved it straight up there. How could Joonmyun let this happen? Why did he think he could take his eyes off Yejoon even for a second? Now he’s let something happen to his child. All the terrible things Joonmyun has ever imagined seem to rear up high, high above him, a tsunami of anxiety threatening to crash down and crush him.

“Okay, don’t panic,” Joonmyun tells himself aloud, though it’s probably a little late to tell himself that. He’s already aware he’s panicking, and Yejoon’s screaming is going straight through his head. He doesn’t think the pearl can really be hurting him, it probably just feels weird, but it sounds like Yejoon is hurting and all Joonmyun’s nerves feel like they’re standing on end.

Think. He has to think. He can handle this. He makes a careful attempt to pinch the pearl out with his fingertips, but it’s lodged right inside his tiny nostril and he can’t get a grip on it without risking pushing it further up. Okay, what next. Take him to their paediatrician? Joonmyun cringes at the idea of bringing Yejoon to their paediatrician like this, a cardiothoracic surgeon who performs open heart surgery daily, unable to handle a foreign object stuck up his baby’s nose. No, he can handle this. He’s not going to freak out. If Yejin finds out he couldn’t get through a single day without an unplanned trip to the doctor, she’ll never let him live it down.

“Why, Yejoon,” he groans to his screaming son. “Why did you have to do that? We can’t tell mommy, okay?”

He carries Yejoon with him to the bathroom and with one hand looks through every nook and cranny to find the tweezers. He knows Yejin has some but he never uses them himself and he has no idea where they are. Yejoon’s screams echo in the bathroom and Joonmyun feels his breathing quicken as anxiety presses at him from the inside out. He knows this feeling. He needs to do some of the calming exercises Yejin made him learn back when he couldn’t even sleep for anxiety, slowly counting backwards from 100 usually works pretty well for him, but he can’t, not when Yejoon is screaming like this and why can’t he find the damn tweezers?

He finds them eventually in a zipped makeup bag by way of dumping the whole thing upside down into the sink. He grabs them out of the mess of makeup products, hair ties, tampons and sachets of moisturizer and hurries with them back into the lounge. He’d be relieved to find them if he wasn’t so anxious, but all he can think of is his next step. If he can just get this damn pearl out of Yejoon’s nose everything is going to be fine.

Five minutes later he gives up. The tweezers are the wrong tool, not opening wide enough for him to really grip the pearl, and it’s really tightly wedged. At least it’s not likely to get any further up Yejoon’s nose, but Joonmyun can’t get it out either. He drops the tweezers and tries to think clearly through the screaming. He’s not used to Yejoon screaming for so long like this. How do parents with screaming babies do it?

Taking him to the paediatrician is looking more enticing by the second, but Joonmyun still feels like such an idiot. Not only did he allow his kid to get hold of a pearl, he, a cardiothoracic surgeon, can’t get it out. But he doesn’t have the right equipment here. He needs forceps ideally, and an angle-hook. He toys with the idea of bringing Yejoon to hospital with him and borrowing the tools, but the idea of the rest of the cardiology team finding out what a useless father he is makes him cringe even harder than going to their paediatrician. Would any of his colleagues be willing to come by and bring him some tools?

At this thought Joonmyun has a flash of inspiration. He remembers the lecture he gave on the new CVRA, where Jongdae had done his disastrous presentation. His friend, the paediatrician, he remembers him clearly, tall and worried as he’d watched Jongdae struggle. Any friend of Jongdae’s is sure to be a good person, right? They’d help him out without making fun of him. The only trouble is, he can’t remember the other doctor’s name.

Think, Joonmyun, think. Joonmyun massages his temples and forces himself to think, trying to visualise the paediatrician’s name. Damn it, he should remember this, it was written right there on the handout and the man had introduced himself too, but Joonmyun can’t remember, can’t think straight. He gives up and sends a text to Jongdae, asking for the name of the paediatrician who’d lectured at the CVRA. He briefly considers adding be quick, it’s an emergency but decides against it. That would probably alarm Jongdae, and it’s really not an emergency, no matter how much Joonmyun feels like it is.

While he waits for a reply, he tries his best to comfort Yejoon. He bounces the boy up and down but that only seems to upset him further. Ten minutes later, when Jongdae finally - finally! - texts back, sweat is slipping down his neck and Yejoon is screaming louder than ever. He wonders if the neighbors are soon going to call the police on him. Jongdae has texted him a name and asks why he wants to know. Joonmyun ignores the question, calls the hospital switchboard and asks for the paediatric ward. The receptionist there puts him on hold to find Dr. Park before he leaves after his night shift. When the phone is picked up again, a deep male voice speaks.

“Dr. Park here.”

“Hi, um, I’m Kim Joonmyun…uh, I mean, Dr. Kim, I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon, we met at the CVRA lecture?” Joonmyun says, words almost tripping over each other as Yejoon screams in the background. This is probably the worst introduction he has ever given. “Uh, I’m really sorry to ask this, but do you have time to come over and help me with an issue? I’ll owe you one, a big one. It’s my son…” he can hear how much his own voice is shaking. He sounds as panicky as he feels, and it’s ridiculous, but Yejoon’s screams are going right through him and he feels like he’s going to cry at any moment.

“What’s wrong?” Chanyeol sounds alarmed. “Do you want to bring him in?”

Joonmyun puts Yejoon down on the couch beside him and runs a hand through his hair. “No, it’s not serious, he somehow got a pearl up his nose and I don’t have the right tools to get it out, but as you can hear, he won’t stop screaming, and I just...please.” Man, he sounds so pathetic. He’ll be humiliated about this later, almost in tears over the phone because of a screaming child, but humiliation can wait until everything is okay again.

“Ah, I see. Not to worry,” Chanyeol says, deep voice calm and soothing. “Kids do things like this all the time. I’m just about to get off shift, so I’ll head over to you now. What’s your address?”

Joonmyun tells the paediatrician his address with a sense of great relief. He can’t really quite believe this is happening, but Chanyeol promises to be there in half an hour or so and bring forceps, and Joonmyun prays he comes before the neighbors decide to call the police because Yejoon has been screaming for half an hour. He hangs up the phone and turns back to Yejoon on the couch.

Yejoon stops screaming.

Joonmyun’s ears ring in the near silence as Yejoon hiccups a little and closes his mouth, staring up at Joonmyun with big, damp eyes.

“Are you serious?” Joonmyun asks him.

Yejoon stares back solemnly, and Joonmyun lets out a shaky sigh. Of course Yejoon would choose the moment he called for help to stop sounding like he’s being murdered. The pearl is still as stuck as ever, but it seems his son has decided to be okay with that now. His head is pounding from the mixture of noise and tension. He picks up Yejoon and brings him with him back into the bedroom, where he places him in the middle of the double bed while he gets dressed. He grabs the first T-shirt and sweatpants he can find, but anything is better than his pajamas, and runs a hairbrush through his hair. Bad enough he’s called in a colleague at the end of a night shift because of his panic, he at least needs to look vaguely sane when the man gets here. Then he puts Yejoon into the baby bouncer - at least in there he can't grab hold of anything and shove it up his nose - and spends the next twenty minutes obsessive-compulsively vacuuming the entire apartment several times over. Who knows if there are more pearls wherever that came from.

Just when he's finally satisfied that the carpets and rugs are free from any sneaky small objects, the doorbell rings. Yejoon looks curiously towards the door from where he's bobbing up and down in the baby bouncer harness, already knowing the ringing chimes means someone will soon enter. Joonmyun gets him out and carries him over to open the door. Chanyeol sends Joonmyun a friendly smile. He looks tired, but his cheerfulness doesn’t seem to be an act as he shakes Joonmyun’s free hand and bends down a little to make cute noises at Yejoon. Yejoon, for his part, giggles, immediately enchanted by the stranger. The little traitor, Joonmyun thinks as Chanyeol kicks off his flip flops and walks confidently into the open-plan apartment.

“Cardiothoracic surgeons live beautifully,” he announces. Joonmyun can’t determine whether or not it’s sarcastic as he looks around the apartment, which is currently littered with baby toys and clothes. He follows Chanyeol into the lounge as the paediatrician makes a beeline for the kitchen table, where he places his medical case and takes a seat on one of the chairs. “Pass him over.”

Joonmyun hands Yejoon to him. Chanyeol picks up the wooden rattle he’s found on the coffee table and shakes it at Yejoon, who squeals delightedly and grabs for it. Joonmyun sighs and slumps down in the next chair, and Chanyeol chuckles at him.

“He stuck the pearl up his nose this morning. I have no idea where it came from and I can’t get it out with tweezers,” he explains. Heat slowly creeps its way up his neck and onto his cheeks. This is so embarrassing. He hides his face in his hand and looks towards the floor. “I panicked because he wouldn’t stop screaming. I should’ve taken him to our paediatrician but it just felt so stupid. Then of course he stopped making a fuss the second I hung up with you.”

Chanyeol laughs. “Don’t worry about it. Kids are like that.” He lets Yejoon get hold of the rattle and takes advantage of his distraction to take a quick look at his nose. It’s certainly a lot easier to get a good look when Yejoon isn’t screaming fit to burst, Joonmyun thinks wryly.

Chanyeol takes a pair of forceps out of his kit. “I think this will work best if you hold him,” he says, so Joonmyun takes Yejoon back and holds him upright on his knee. Chanyeol flicks his left wrist, and to Joonmyun’s astonishment, a small sparkly ball appears in his palm as if by magic. He stares, wide-eyed.

“You two just got the exact same expression on your faces,” Chanyeol laughs. “I know a few sleight-of-hand tricks. Keeps kids distracted through all kinds of unpleasant procedures.” He flips his hand and the ball appears to float over his fingertips and land on the back of it. It sparkles different colours in the sunshine from the window. Joonmyun blinks his fascination away, but Yejoon remains transfixed, reaching out for the ball with small hands. Chanyeol holds it out of reach as Joonmyun gently holds Yejoon’s head to allow Chanyeol to move in with the forceps. The cold metal makes Yejoon fuss and he moves his head, but Joonmyun’s hand on the back of his head is firm and it’s only seconds before Chanyeol triumphantly pulls the small pearl out of Yejoon’s nostril. The baby sneezes and Joonmyun lets go of his head.

Joonmyun wilts with relief. “Oh, thank God.”

Chanyeol laughs, makes the sparkly ball vanish into thin air, and gets up to throw what turns out to be a plastic fake pearl away when Joonmyun says he doesn't want to save it. Yejoon is wriggling in his lap, so Joonmyun gets up and puts him back into the baby bouncer. 

Chanyeol returns and sits down again to put his equipment away.

“It was so easy,” Joonmyun says ruefully. “I can’t believe I couldn’t handle it myself. I’m so sorry to make you come out here for this.”

“It’s not easy to do on your own,” Chanyeol says. “You didn’t have the right tools either. I don’t have kids myself, but believe me when I say it’s extremely normal for parents to stress out about things happening to their kids. I see it all the time.”

Joonmyun sighs dejectedly. “Still, I should’ve been able to remove a pearl from a baby’s nose. I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon. Plus I let him get hold of it in the first place. I can’t even work out where it came from. I feel like a total failure as a father.”

Chanyeol pats his shoulder.

“Don’t let it bother you. So many kids put stuff up their nose at some point.” He smiles broadly. “When I was four, I stuffed sellotape up mine.”

Joonmyun looks up. “Really?”

Chanyeol nods, eyes sparkling. “I don’t remember why I thought it was a good idea. I had to get it removed at the hospital by an ENT specialist. At least a pearl doesn’t adhere to the inside of your nose. I remember them pulling it out and it _hurt_.”

It’s oddly comforting to know that he’s at least not the only parent to have had a child get something lodged up their nose.

“I panicked,” he admits. “My anxiety just makes everything worse.” He doesn’t really know why he’s telling Chanyeol this. There’s something so open about the paediatrician, with no hint of judgment. Chanyeol just nods understandingly.

“It’s normal to be anxious about your children,” he says. “Especially your first.”

“Thanks for helping me out,” Joonmyun sighs. “I’m sorry I took up your morning with this nonsense when you’re tired after a night shift.” Chanyeol just waves his apology away.

He offers Chanyeol coffee, but the paediatrician shakes his head, saying he’ll head home and grab some sleep and the caffeine will just keep him awake. Joonmyun thinks having a nap sounds like an amazing idea. He’s exhausted from all the panic he’s been doing.

He takes Yejoon out of the bouncer and walks Chanyeol to the door, where he helps Yejoon wave his little arm goodbye. When Joonmyun closes the door and looks down, he finds Yejoon yawning, definitely ready for a nap. He’s probably more tired than usual after all the screaming. He looks completely fine, and the last shreds of remnant anxiety release their claws from Joonmyun’s chest.

He puts Yejoon down in the cot, then starfishes himself on the bed and closes his eyes, weary but very relieved. His last thought before falling asleep is that he’s going to start child-proofing the apartment a lot sooner than he planned. Specifically, tomorrow.

\---

Minseok has just sent a patient up to radiology for an ankle X-ray and is on his way to grab a new chart when Nurse Seo stops him in the hall.

“Dr. Kim, your daughter is here,” she says.

Minseok feels the blood drain from his face. Nurse Seo seems suddenly very far away.

“Which daughter? What happened to her?” he croaks. He actually feels like he might pass out. He grabs her sleeve desperately. “Tell me!” He needs to know, he needs to know _right now,_ Eunbi, Nayoung, please, _please_ -

“Dr. Kim,” he hears, so distant through the ringing in his ears. Nurse Seo is guiding him backwards. There are chairs along the wall, and when the back of his legs hit one, he collapses onto it. A cool hand on the back of his neck pushes his head down, almost to his knees. “She’s fine. It’s Nayoung, your older daughter. She’s not hurt or sick. She just came to see you, to say hello. Do you hear me, Minseok?” He almost jolts at his first name coming from her lips. “She’s fine.”

Relief. Minseok shudders beneath her hand while everything swims around him. “Fuck,” he whispers, “fucking _Christ_.”

For once, Nurse Seo doesn’t scold him for language. He must look pretty bad.

“Do you need to lie down?” she asks. She doesn’t sound quite as brusque as usual, despite the fact that she’ll doubtless have seen hundreds of people nearly or completely faint over the long years of her nursing career. The novelty tends to wear off after the first few.

“I’ll be fine. Just - give me a moment.”

“I didn’t realise you’d take it that way,” Nurse Seo says. It’s probably as close to an apology as he’ll ever hear from her. Of course she wouldn’t, Minseok thinks as he breathes carefully and wills everything to stabilize. It’s his trauma that has him instantly leaping to the wrong conclusion.

“Nayoung said she wants to come and do her homework in your office,” Nurse Seo tells him. Her legs turn in front of his lowered head and she murmurs something to another passing nurse, then turns back to him. “Something about her after-school academy being closed.”

The second nurse returns, and there’s a cold pack pressed against the back of his neck. He shivers at the coolness. His whole body is radiating heat, like he’s suddenly turned into a furnace. He knows this is a symptom of pre-syncope, just like the floatiness and the ringing ears and the nausea. The cold pack will help his blood vessels to contract and stop him from passing out. He just has to wait it out.

It takes a couple of minutes for the heat to retreat and the world to stabilise. Minseok cautiously lifts his head. Nurse Seo is still standing there, looking down at him severely.

“Okay,” he says, reaching up to take the cold pack off his neck. He finds a smile. “All better.”

“What was all that about, hmm?” Nurse Seo takes the cold pack back from him and watches him with a beady eye as he stands up. “I’ve never even seen you flinch before.”

Minseok sighs. “I have some pretty bad trauma regarding my children being in the emergency department,” he says. It’s more than he’s ever said to anyone except Yifan. “I got a shock.”

“Would have been good to know that,” Nurse Seo grumbles as she starts to walk towards reception. Minseok follows her. Relief is still flooding his system. He feels grateful for everything in the entire universe.

Nayoung is chatting to Aecha, leaning confidently on the reception desk as his head nurse smiles at her. She’s still in school uniform, but wearing a bright red hoodie instead of her blazer. Minseok glances at the clock - it’s 5:30 pm.

“Nayoung,” he says as he approaches the desk. Nayoung looks up and gives him a huge smile.

“Dad!” she says, standing up straight. “Whoa, you really do wear one of those coats! You look like a real doctor!”

Minseok laughs. So does Aecha. He thinks he even sees Nurse Seo fighting a smile. “That’s because I am a real doctor, sweetheart,” he says, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze. Heck, she gets taller every day. She’s almost at eye-level and she’s only ten. She’s going to be taller than him, he’s sure now.

“What’s all this about your academy?” he asks, letting her go quickly. He’s not sure if she’s reached the age yet where getting a hug from her dad in public is embarrassing.

“The power went out,” Nayoung says. “We couldn’t see a thing! Something blew in the electrics or something, so they sent us all home, but Eunbi’s at orchestra until 7:30 and mom picks her up straight from work. It’s boring being home alone, so...I wondered if you’d mind if I did my homework here. I won’t be annoying, I promise! I’ll just be super quiet in your office. You won’t even know I’m there.”

Minseok smiles, feeling something warm growing in his chest. Nayoung has never come to him of her own accord before.

“That’s fine with me,” he says, and Nayoung bobs up and down happily. “I do have to see patients, though, I’m afraid.”

“I know! I don’t mind,” Nayoung says, so Minseok leads her down the hall to his office. He flicks on the light switch. Nayoung looks around curiously, taking in the bookshelves with his medical texts, the cabinets, the couch, the small coffee table, the computer desk. Minseok is glad he tidied away his pillow and blanket from the couch this morning. The knowledge of his upcoming joint therapy with Jangmi had had him unable to face his empty apartment for the first time in several weeks.

“This is where you work,” she says, more to herself than to Minseok.

“There should be enough space on the computer desk for you to do your homework,” Minseok says. “Or you can sit on the floor and use the coffee table if you’d rather. Do you need to use the computer?”

“Yeah, can I?” Nayoung asks, so Minseok quickly unlocks it and logs out of the patient record system. Nayoung sits down happily in his swivel chair and spins around on it a couple of times before taking off her backpack and starting to pull out her books.

“If you need anything, let Aecha at the reception desk know and she’ll page me,” he says. “It’s probably better if you don’t wander around the department. There’s a lot of busy people around.”

Nayoung nods.

“I’ll come look in on you if I get a chance,” Minseok says.

“It’s okay, dad,” Nayoung grins at him. “I’m fine. I won’t mess anything up.”

Minseok laughs. “Okay then. Have fun with your homework.”

Nayoung sticks her tongue out at him, books already spread out on the computer desk. “Oh yes, my ever so super-fun geometry! Don’t worry, dad, I’ll have a blast,” she says sarcastically. Minseok leaves her, chuckling to himself as he goes back to find out if the suspected broken ankle is an actual broken ankle or if he can send them home with a bandage and painkillers.

Aecha nods him out for a break an hour later. It’s 6:30 and he’s not sure if Nayoung has food. He’ll take her to the cafeteria if she hasn’t. He goes back into his office and finds that instead of being at the computer desk, Nayoung is standing in front of the bookshelf. She jumps a little when the door opens and turns around. She’s holding something in both hands. Minseok glances at it as he closes the door and takes a step in, and sees that it’s a picture frame.

It’s the picture of Ilsung from his desk.

Minseok stops moving. Of course Nayoung noticed the picture. It was right there on his desk in front of her.

“Dad?”

He blinks. Nayoung is looking at him. Her lip is sticking out a little, in that same pout that she had when she was three years old, the one where she thinks she might have done something wrong.

“Oh, you saw that?” Minseok really only just manages to keep his voice light, casual. There’s no point in backing out, pretending this isn’t happening. He refuses to go distant now. Not when Nayoung has come to him on her own for the first time, trusted him enough to be sure of his welcome. He will not let himself ruin this. “You know who that is?”

“Of course,” Nayoung says. “It’s Ilsung. My brother who died.”

Oh, God. Minseok has to close his eyes. No. He can do this. He can.

He opens his eyes and smiles. “That’s right. You’ve seen pictures?”

“Yeah. Mom has lots, in the family albums. We look at them sometimes.”

“You and Eunbi?”

“Yeah, with mom. Eunbi doesn’t remember him. She was only a baby.” She looks down at the photograph again, while Minseok pieces together what that means.

He goes over to his couch and sits down on it. Standing awkwardly in the middle of his office isn’t a good place for this. He pats the couch next to him invitingly, and Nayoung plops down next to him. She rests the frame on her knees, and they both look at it.

“You remember him, then?” Minseok asks.

“Kind of. I remember playing with him, I think. Playing with trains and stuff. I remember when he died too.”

Minseok shivers. Kids are so blunt. He really, really wants to distance himself. The last thing he needs is to have a flashback in front of her. That would terrify her. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to block this off. Nayoung is talking to him. What happened to Ilsung affected her life too, just like it affected his. Her parents divorced. Her mom has a new boyfriend. Her dad…

Minseok feels pain like claws ripping inside his chest. Her dad pretended she didn’t exist for years, because looking at her made him remember her dead brother.

“You were pushing down on him really hard,” Nayoung continues, so simple, so simply, brutally honest. “I didn’t get it then ‘cause I was only three. I was really scared because I thought you were hurting him.”

“I was doing CPR on him,” Minseok says. It comes out little more than a whisper.

“Yeah, I know that now,” Nayoung says. “It was just ‘cause I was so little. Then you told me to go wait with Eunbi. I remember she was crying in the high chair and mom was on the phone and nobody was picking up Eunbi so she’d stop crying. That was how I knew something really bad was happening, because you or mom never let Eunbi cry for long.”

Minseok has no recollection of Eunbi crying. In fact, he has no recollection of Nayoung from the moment he sent her out of the room.

“But that’s pretty much all I remember about Ilsung,” Nayoung finishes up. Minseok nods. He wants to ask her if she has any questions about Ilsung, but he knows that if he opens his mouth, he’ll cry. Damn Wu Yifan and his ‘normal grief response’. He knows it’s not Yifan’s fault he’s going through all this now instead of back when he should have been, but he really doesn’t want to cry in front of Nayoung.

“Oh. Um. Dad?” He hears the rustle, feels the couch cushions move as Nayoung turns towards him. “Uh...are you okay?”

Minseok opens his mouth to say yes, and a sob comes out instead. He leans forward and covers his face as the tears roll down his cheeks.

“Shit, shit, fuck,” Nayoung curses, and Minseok starts to laugh at the same time as crying, which sounds appalling.

“Language,” he chokes out.

“Aw, hell. What am I gonna do?” Nayoung asks herself. There’s a slight pause, then he feels her arms go around him. She’s strong, hugging him tight. “Sorry, dad.”

“Don’t be. Wasn’t you,” Minseok manages.

“Mom doesn’t cry when we talk about Ilsung,” Nayoung says, still hugging him. “She always says we can ask about him any time. I didn’t know this would happen.” She sighs. “Poor dad. You’re still really, really sad about him, huh?”

“Yeah,” Minseok says, and it’s another first for him. The first time he’s admitted it. “I am. I am still really, really sad about him.”

“I shouldn’t have talked about it,” Nayoung says. “I just saw the photo. I thought it would be okay.”

“It is okay.” Minseok is getting a grip on his tears. He rubs his eyes on his sleeve. “It’s fine. I want you to be able to talk about it, to ask about it.”

“I don’t want to if it makes you cry.” Nayoung lets go of him and hops up from the couch. “Don’t you have any tissues in here or something?”

“In the top desk drawer,” Minseok tells her, and a couple of seconds later the box lands in his lap. He blows his nose. “Sorry about that. It’s not your fault. I cry every time I talk about Ilsung.”

Nayoung’s eyes go huge. “Wait, you mean for…” He can see her doing rapid mental maths. “Seven years every time you talked about him you cried? That’s a lot of crying, dad.”

Minseok smiles. “No, because I only started talking about him this year.”

“Huh.” Nayoung jumps back onto the couch and sits on it sidewards, legs crossed. “You know, I kind of get why, if you cry like that every time. Crying sucks. Gives you a headache and all.”

“Crying really sucks,” Minseok agrees, laughing a little.

“Are you okay now?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Minseok smiles at her as reassuringly as he can. “You can ask me stuff now. I don’t think I’ll cry again.”

“Um,” Nayoung says. She’s grinning now. “No offence, dad, but I think I’ll stick to a safer subject. Like. Do you think you know more about geometry than a ten-year-old? Because I am so stuck on this assignment, you would not believe.”

Minseok smiles. He supposes he doesn’t blame her, but he’s glad she’s not been scared off. Maybe he’ll bring up Ilsung with her another time, when he’s more stable about the whole thing.

“Why don’t you show me, and we’ll find out?” he says.

Nayoung punches the air with joy and hops off the couch again to run and get her geometry books. Irrepressible kid, Minseok thinks fondly. God, he loves her.

When he’s finished helping Nayoung get through her stuck point with the geometry and makes sure she has enough food in her backpack to tide her over, he leaves her to see more patients. His shift finishes at nine, and he drives Nayoung home. Before she gets out of the car, she remembers something and digs in her backpack, then passes him a crumpled slip of paper. Minseok unfolds it and turns on the interior car light to read what it says.

“It’s Peter Pan,” Nayoung informs him. “Our school is doing it for our musical.”

“Are you in it?” Minseok asks.

Nayoung groans loudly. “They’re making me be in it. They make every single kid in the entire school be in it. It’s insane. There’s not enough parts, so they’re making little kids be things like “assorted fish in the sea of Neverland” and “indigenous flowers in the fairy wood”.”

Minseok laughs. “What are you, then?”

“I’m a “miscellaneous pirate on Captain Hook’s ship”,” Nayoung says with a sigh. “I don’t even want to be in it, but if I have to be, a pirate isn’t so bad. But Eunbi has a good part. She can actually sing, you know. She’s playing John, that’s Wendy’s middle brother, the smart one with the glasses and top hat. She can sing and act better than the boys in her year, that’s why she got it. Anyway.” She fidgets with her hands a little. “I don’t mind if you don’t come, because it’s honestly going to be terrible and it’s super dumb, and I know you are very busy saving people’s lives and all. But Eunbi...I think she’d be pretty happy if you came.”

Minseok smiles. “I’d love to come see you. Eunbi and you, too. I bet you’ll be the best “miscellaneous pirate” of them all.”

Nayoung snorts, then giggles. “Even though it’s going to be the lamest musical in the history of all lame musicals?”

Minseok laughs. “If it is, it’ll be a true experience!” he says. “I’ll be there. I promise.”

Nayoung smiles. She gets out of the car and runs around it, then knocks on his window. Minseok rolls it down. Nayoung leans in and whispers, “I knew you would, dad.”

She smiles at him, then spins around and runs up the path towards the house. Minseok watches until she’s opened the door and is safely inside, and is hard-pushed not to burst into tears for the third time that day.


	31. July 1st

Yixing glances at his phone screen, but it stays stubbornly black. He’s supposed to be checking his patient records ready for ward rounds, but it’s hard to focus. The monsoon season has started and the rain has been non-stop for days, and he’s anxious about Songmi travelling in the terrible weather. Last week, his wife rushed back to her hometown of Daegu when her father was suddenly admitted to hospital. Yixing had wanted to go too, but he hadn’t been able to clear his schedule and when Songmi, a couple of hours later, had called him to say it was just a transient ischaemic attack, not a full-blown stroke, they’d agreed he would stay in Seoul. Now her dad is back on his feet and Songmi is taking the train home. It’s safer than driving, but there’s the chance the lines could be washed out, as they have in previous monsoons, and his wife will be stuck in Daegu and away from him for who knows how long. He sighs and leaves to start his afternoon ward rounds.

His first room houses two patients, 85-year-old Han Donghyun who developed pneumonia on top of his lung cancer, and 67-year-old Park Sanghoon who got a stoma after his ileus was treated surgically and they found a tumour in his rectum. Yixing enters the room, trailed by the intern and a first-year resident.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he says. Sanghoon looks up from the newspaper he’s reading. Yixing takes a few steps over to stand next to the bed and checks his notes. “How are you, Mr. Park?” he asks.

Sanghoon puts the paper down in his lap. “Better,” he says, waving his hand gently and making the IV line to the bag of pain medication behind him ripple. “When will I be going home?”

“I want the gastrointestinal surgeon who did your surgery to take a look at you as well, but from my perspective, you’re good to go when your pain can be managed with paracetamol," Yixing tells him. "We will need to schedule check-ups and keep an eye out for your cancer, but so far so good.”

Sanghoon nods and lifts the newspaper again. Yixing catches sight of the front-page headline describing a mudflow at Taebaeksan threatening the city of Taebaek and how evacuation has been started to prevent loss of life. It’s all because of the rain. Yixing thinks of Songmi and hopes she’ll get to Seoul okay.

A cough from the other patient distracts him and Yixing asks the elderly man how he’s doing, then moves on to the patients in the next couple of rooms. A woman with advanced breast cancer complains about the weather as she stares out at the sheeting rain beating against the window, and Yixing can only agree with her. An elderly patient with kidney cancer is deteriorating in front of him, her mental state altering back and forth in the few minutes he’s there. Yixing listens as she talks to him like he’s her long-dead husband and schedules an MRI to look for brain metastases. The further he gets around the ward, the more questions he starts to ask the intern and the resident, asking them about the conditions of his patients and what to do about it.

When he finishes the round, he sends the intern to the outpatient clinic and the first year resident has disappears into the shared workroom to write up an assignment. Yixing goes back to his office to put in the last details in the patient’s journals. A soft KaTalk! sounds from his phone on his desk and he lunges for it to check the message. I got on the train fine. Are you gonna come pick me up from the station? Songmi has added a double heart emoji and Yixing feels himself relax. His wife is on her way back to him.

I can’t, won’t be off work until 5, he writes, and sends a sad, crying emoji. Songmi texts back with a kissing emoji and promises to meet him at home instead. Yixing leans back in his chair and closes his eyes briefly, shaking off the worry that had been occupying his mind, before going back to his work.

When his shift is over, Yixing sheds his doctor’s coat and heads out of oncology towards the main entrance. The rain is still bucketing down outside, making everything seem darker than it really is. Yixing took the car to work this morning and he doesn’t regret it. It even looks cold out there, though the temperature displayed on his weather app says 24 degrees. Yixing pulls his raincoat closer around him before making a dash for the car through sheets of rain. By the time he reaches the carpark a couple of minutes away, he's drenched. Behind the wheel, he wipes the water from his face, then wriggles out of his coat and drops it to the floor on the passenger side.

Driving home takes longer than usual because Yixing is extra careful. He doesn’t have any desire to end up in a hospital bed for weeks again and, as was driven home to him earlier this year, any little bump could be devastating to him. Driving still makes him a little nervous, and it’s worse in weather like this. The rain hasn’t let up at all when he arrives at their apartment. If it continues like this, the mudflow in Taebaek isn’t the only thing South Korea is going to struggle with.

He runs from the car to the entrance, raincoat in hand, and sighs with relief as he enters the building. They live on the tenth floor, so he takes the elevator as the water from his raincoat drops onto the floor. He’s so glad he made it home. Hopefully the rain will stop soon.

“Hey love,” he calls into the apartment when he opens the door and steps inside. Songmi calls out to him from the lounge and he smiles at the sound of her voice. It’s so nice to hear her greet him after a week of coming home to an empty apartment. He sheds his shoes and hangs his raincoat to dry before he wanders into the lounge and finds his wife on their couch, bare feet tucked under her and a book in her lap. She laughs when she sees his sodden state.

“Oh dear,” she says and puts her book down so she can get off the couch and meet him in the middle of the room. She reaches up to brush the soaked hair plastered to his forehead aside. “What horrible weather. How was driving?”

“Horrible,” Yixing says, “but I survived.”

Songmi goes back to the couch and Yixing heads into the bedroom to change into dry clothes and get a towel for his hair. When he returns to the lounge, Songmi tells him about her parents and how they’re doing. Her father’s memory has returned after his TIA and he’s started preventative treatment with anticoagulants. It had taken a few days for them to get used to a regular schedule but Songmi is confident they have it all under control now. Yixing dries his hair and rubs the towel over his face to remove excess water. He drops it on the back of the couch before he sits down beside her feet and pulls them into his lap as Songmi continues. Apparently her sister had visited her parents a few days later. Her sister is doing well in spite of her PCOS, the medication is working and the pain she used to endure has lessened considerably. Yixing is happy for her. Living with chronic pain isn’t much fun. A harsh wind bangs the rain against the windows in their lounge and Songmi stops mid-sentence as they both look over at the glass.

“I hope Joonmyun and Yejin get here okay,” Songmi says and pulls her feet from Yixing’s lap. She moves close enough to kiss his cheek. “Do you want to shower first?”

Yixing looks at her and he wishes he had the guts to say ‘let’s shower together’ but he knows there’s no way that’s going to fly when they have invited dinner guests. It’s probably better it doesn’t happen anyway. “You go first,” he tells her.

Songmi nods and heads towards the bathroom. Yixing leans back and turns around to stare out of the window. He hopes Joonmyun and Yejin get here okay too. Yixing hasn’t spoken a lot to Joonmyun. They’ve done a few consultations together on tumours in the mediastinum, but other than that it’s been polite greetings here and there. Their wives, on the other hand, had really found each other when they’d met at the Christmas party and they’ve been meeting up ever since. This evening is the first time Yejin is bringing her husband for a more formal dinner.

Yixing showers, gets dressed in a white shirt and a pair of black pants, black socks laying on their bed ready for him to wear, though he prefers bare feet in the summer. The ceiling fan is on overdrive in their kitchen as Songmi cooks the last few dishes. Songmi is dressed in a short dark blue satin dress that hugs her body in all the right places and Yixing can’t help himself as he walks up behind her. His arms wrap around her waist and he pulls her closer, just to rest his head on hers and smell her perfume. She chuckles and turns around in his hold. The galbi is in the oven on grill and the pajeon in the pan can wait for a second or two while Yixing leans down to kiss his wife.

“You look beautiful,” he tells her.

Songmi smiles. “You look quite handsome yourself,” she says. Yixing moves in to kiss her again and is thwarted by the rice cooker beeping to let them know it’s done. Songmi pulls away and turns back to the pajeon in the pan and Yixing holds back his sigh as he goes over to grab the rice spoon and prepare the rice bowls.

Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rings. Songmi leaves the last pajeon on the now turned off stove before she goes to greet her friend. Yixing can hear them chatter at the front door from where he’s setting the last side dishes on the dining table. Soon their guests enter the kitchen and dining area and Yixing looks up from where he’s just put the last plate.

“Good to see you,” he says and walks over to shake their hands. Yejin is holding their son in her arms, and Joonmyun is carrying a baby car seat. The baby looks around with wide curious eyes. He’s so cute, and Yixing goes still for a moment, eyes going distant as he wonders if one day, their wishes will come true.

Joonmyun looks a little embarrassed as he nods towards Yejoon. “My mother was going to babysit but she was afraid to drive in the rain, so I hope it’s okay we’ve brought him along,” he says. Yixing smiles reassuringly.

“It’s fine," he assures him. "The rain really is crazy.”

The conversation flows between them easily after that. Joonmyun tells him about a fancy bypass he’d received from a well-established American university months ago. It’s amazing, Yixing thinks, that they have a surgeon like Joonmyun in their hospital. He deserves the recognition for his skills. He’s still a fellow, but there’s no way he won’t rise to fame within the medical community soon enough. Dinner goes smoothly, without a peep from baby Yejoon as he sleeps in his car seat. As the rain pours down outside, the inside is full of laughter and smiles. They talk about everything and Yixing soon realises there’s a really good friend in Joonmyun.

“Yejin told me you started IVF,” Joonmyun says over dessert and it takes Yixing by surprise. He looks towards the women on the other side of the table, but neither of them notice the sudden silence from him. Joonmyun, however, does. “I’m sorry if it’s not a good topic," he says quickly. "She was so excited for Songmi that she couldn't help telling me, but I don’t know the circumstances or anything. I apologize if I’ve said too much.”

Yixing can actually see the embarrassment and anxiety torturing Joonmyun and he hastens to reassure him. There’s no reason for him to be so ashamed of what he’s said. Even though Yixing doesn’t know Joonmyun that well, this isn’t the first time Yixing has noticed his tendency towards overthinking.

“It’s okay, don’t worry. I should’ve known Songmi would have told Yejin. I’m just not used to talking about it yet, it’s a bit of a sore topic for me,” he admits. “But it’s going fine. We recently had the first few embryos transferred but it’s unlikely to catch on the first time, according to our specialist.”

Joonmyun nods. “You should choose Kim Jongdae as your obstetrician when you succeed,” he says. “He’s a great doctor and a good friend of mine. I can say with 100% certainty that he will take great care of Songmi.”

Yixing laughs and thanks him. He doesn’t know if - or when - they’ll succeed, but the few times he's met Jongdae he seemed like a really nice guy, and it's a good reminder that he's an ob-gyn.

The rest of the evening goes by peacefully. Coffee is brewing and spreading a delicious scent in the apartment. Songmi has found the cookies she baked a couple of days ago and they’ve moved from the dining table to the couch. Yejoon has been so good all evening and Yixing thinks, if he’s lucky enough to get a kid, he wants them to be as easy as Yejoon. When he says that out loud Joonmyun snorts and Yejin looks at him with a questioning eyebrow raised. The story isn’t shared, though, because Joonmyun refuses to tell it and Yixing laughs when Yejin pouts at her husband. When the coffee has brewed and they settle down the conversation steers towards summer plans and what they'll do when the rain stops. They talk about where to go, what countries they’d like to see if possible and tell stories from past vacations.

An hour later when the coffee is gone and they’ve said goodbye to Joonmyun and Yejin, Yixing settles on the couch and gets his book. He removes his socks and leans against the back and starts reading. Songmi is changing into her nightwear in their bedroom. A bit of shuffling sounds in their apartment but Yixing is too caught up in his book to take notice.

“Hey baby,” Songmi says from the doorway and her tone of voice has Yixing look up. He puts his book down and shifts on the couch so he can focus all his attention on his wife. “My period is ten days late.”

\---

When Baekhyun climbs up the steps from the subway stop closest to home, it’s pouring as heavily as it had been when he left work. Sheets of rain bolt down from the sky like a waterfall, and rivulets trickle down the steps into the subway despite the storm drains. There’s just so much water the city can barely cope. The Han is higher than it’s been in years, threatening to flood the low Jamsil Bridge, lapping at the lower walkway of the Han River Park. If it gets much higher, some of the highways will have to close.

Baekhyun unfolds his umbrella when he reaches the street level, but everything is just so wet that even the umbrella doesn’t do much to keep him dry. His head is protected, but the rain is driven sideways with the wind, and the standing water on the pavements splashes up, so that by the time he’s at Chanyeol and Yeonseok’s apartment building five minutes later, he’s nearly as drenched as he would have been without the umbrella.

He shakes off the umbrella as best he can before he enters the apartment building lobby. His shoes squeak as he crosses the floor, and his jeans cling to his legs, heavy and chilly now that the air conditioning hits him. As he reaches the elevator he sees the elderly security guard dragging a couple of big black non-slip mats out of the storage room. Baekhyun leans his umbrella against the wall and hurries over.

“Hi, Mr. Lee,” he says cheerfully, reaching to take the mats from him. “Let me help, these look heavy.”

Mr. Lee straightens up, rubbing his back and looking relieved as Baekhyun takes the weight of the mats. “Thanks, Baekhyun,” he says. “They need to go between the door and the elevator. People can’t help tracking water through and I don’t want anyone to slip.”

Baekhyun wraps his fingers through the holes and hauls the mats across the foyer. They are heavy, and he’s glad he came in at this moment. Mr. Lee has a herniated disk. He shouldn’t be trying to lift things like this. He grunts a little as he drags one of the mats into place in front of the elevator. He’s still too skinny, really. His arms are like single noodles. He should work out. Yeonseok would probably take him to the gym and show him what to do if Baekhyun asked. Yeonseok’s arms are probably stronger than Baekhyun’s legs.

Mr. Lee continues to chatter as Baekhyun drags the second mat into place and tries not to let on how hard it is. He tells Baekhyun about how long it’s been since he last saw rains like this, and how a mudslide near his home village has blocked off the only access road.

“And they say it’s not going to let up for at least another two days,” Mr. Lee continues as Baekhyun drops the last mat with a heavy thwack. He straightens up, brushing his hands on his soaked jeans, and nods.

“I heard that too. I hope the river can cope. When I left work it looked close to bursting its banks.”

“Luckily we’re on high ground here,” Mr. Lee says. “But I shouldn’t be keeping you, Baekhyun, you’re soaked. Go and get dry, I don’t want you catching a cold.”

Baekhyun smiles reassuringly at the elderly man, feeling a warmth inside him at how he cares. “I’ll have a hot shower as soon as I get in,” he promises. Mr. Lee smiles at him, his face collapsing into affectionate wrinkles.

Baekhyun knows that getting wet doesn’t actually correlate to catching a cold, but Mr. Lee wouldn’t believe him if he tried to explain that, even though he knows Baekhyun is a doctor. When Baekhyun got well enough to be able to pay attention to his surroundings and find interest in people again, he’d introduced himself to the building security guard. He'd spent hours sitting with him in the security room before he'd gone back to work, listening quietly to all the old man's stories. Mr. Lee could tell Baekhyun had been ill, never asked for specifics, and has looked out for him ever since. He says Baekhyun reminds him of his grandson who now lives in Tokyo, and Baekhyun basks in the attention.

Thanks to his ongoing psychotherapy, Baekhyun has become aware that he needs to be shown affection a lot more than he’d ever really realised. It was probably part of the reason why he’d broken so badly. He’d relied solely on Nari for affection and physical contact, and when they’d broken up, he’d lost that, along with everything else.

He’s so lucky, he thinks as he gets into the elevator and takes it to the fifth floor, with Chanyeol and Yeonseok. So, so lucky. They’ve been more generous than Baekhyun could ever deserve. Yeonseok had even taken leave during that first week, when Baekhyun was so low he couldn’t even shower by himself, just to look after him. He’d been more helpless than a small child. It’s hard for him to even think of how bad he’d felt back then. He’s so lucky that he had people who cared enough to save him. Baekhyun doesn’t know how he can ever repay them.

He’s still on antidepressants and probably will be for a while longer, but he is living again. He’s himself again. He hasn’t had a psychosis since that time months ago when he’d impulsively injured his wrist. He feels stable. Yeonseok and Chanyeol see that too, and they trust him again. The locks are off the cabinets, the knives are within everyone’s reach and they can open the blinds without having to climb onto a chair and wind the mechanism manually. He’s allowed to close his bedroom door, use the stove, and be home alone without them worrying. He’s glad that he can be a good flatmate now. He knows that Chanyeol, especially, used to fear coming home and finding Baekhyun gone beyond help. He can only imagine how brave Chanyeol must have been to allow Baekhyun to live with him while having to constantly be afraid of that. Baekhyun isn’t sure that he could do it.

He’s shivering a little by the time he gets to the apartment door. The air-conditioning is strong in the halls, many degrees colder than the humid monsoon warmth outside. He taps in the code and pushes the door open, making a quick plan in his head to get out one of the containers of doenjang jiggae he and Yeonseok had made on the weekend and put in containers in the freezer for the times when they’re not all eating together. It can defrost while he’s showering. It’s just after 1 pm and he only worked the morning today, so he has a couple of hours before Lu Han is picking him up at 4. They’re going to a lecture being held at a conference centre just out of town by a visiting plastic surgeon from Japan, a burns expert. Baekhyun is looking forward to it, and he’s also looking forward to seeing Lu Han again. The cosmetic surgeon is back to his regular job at his private clinic, but they’d got on so well during the three weeks they’d shared Baekhyun’s role, and Baekhyun finds himself missing his passionate talks of cosmetic procedures, his sharp humour, and the way he throws his head back when he laughs.

He pads down the hall barefoot, soaked socks in hand, comes around the corner into the kitchen, and stops dead in his tracks. Yeonseok is pressing Chanyeol up against the pantry cupboard door, almost on tiptoe as they kiss passionately. Hands are going everywhere, up Yeonseok’s shirt, down Chanyeol’s waistband, and a slightly strangled noise escapes Baekhyun. Chanyeol opens his eyes, makes eye contact with Baekhyun, and pulls his head back from Yeonseok with a gasp. His face, initially flushed, pales.

Baekhyun is only shocked for a second. He whoops loudly. “Yes, man! Get it on!” he cheers, hopping across the chilly floor in his bare feet to the freezer door. Yeonseok, who had moved in to worry at Chanyeol’s neck with his teeth when Chanyeol pulled his face away, finally notices Baekhyun’s presence and looks around, eyes hazy. At Baekhyun’s whoop, Chanyeol stops paling and instead floods a deep, deep scarlet.

“Don’t mind me!” Baekhyun exclaims as he enthusiastically roots out a container of jiggae and slams the freezer door, then shoves it in the microwave and sets it to defrost. “Gosh, is it just me or is it getting hot in here! I think I need to go have a shower!”

Chanyeol makes a strange, wheezing squeak, kind of like a pet toy being stepped on. Baekhyun isn’t sure whether it’s at Baekhyun’s teasing or whether Yeonseok has just done something to him, but he decides to leave the couple to it and beats his retreat.

He peels his soggy jeans off thankfully and steps into the shower. Chanyeol and Yeonseok usually keep their interactions in the shared spaces of the apartment pretty PG, but Baekhyun isn’t stupid, nor is he deaf; he’s house-sharing with a couple who are passionately in love, and things like this are bound to happen. Baekhyun doesn’t mind. He’s never been embarrassed about this kind of thing, and whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual makes no difference to him. But Chanyeol, though, he’s still working through a lot of internalized fear. Baekhyun hopes that his teasing was enough to allay that initial fear response. He doesn’t want his presence in their apartment to mean they have to hide away.

It makes him think, though. He thinks about it as he showers, dries off, and starts to get dressed in dark jeans and a tidy white button-down for the lecture later. Chanyeol had told Baekhyun to stay as long as he needs to, and Baekhyun knows Chanyeol well enough to know that he means it. But Baekhyun is coming to the stage where he maybe doesn’t, actually, need to live with them any more. He’s so much better. He doesn’t need to be taken care of any more. Should he move out?

The idea makes a cold, sinking feeling in Baekhyun’s chest. His fingers slow on the buttons of his shirt. Right. Maybe he should move out. He could move back to his old apartment, where he still pays rent, simply because he’s never been able to face going back there to pack everything up. This is Yeonseok and Chanyeol’s home, not his. It’s their life he’s barged into, no matter how incredibly nice they’ve both been about it. Yes, he probably should get out. It would be the right thing to do, now that he’s better.

But he doesn’t want to. It makes him scared to think of it. Living alone again...being alone again...

He shivers. He doesn’t want to be alone again. He needs touch. He needs people. He needs to love and be loved. It’s completely platonic with Chanyeol and Yeonseok, of course, and that’s enough for Baekhyun. It’s working for him. They let him be close to them as much as he wants. It’s even better that they’re gay, because they’re so open to physical contact between men, no awkwardness there at all. They let him snuggle up between them during movies, they give him hugs when they notice he looks sad without him even asking. Baekhyun has found that he likes being petted, being taken care of. It makes him feel worth something. It fills the aching emptiness inside.

He doesn’t think they’re faking their affection. He trusts that they genuinely like him, though Baekhyun still can’t quite figure out why. He wouldn’t blame them at all if they were irritated with his clinginess and disruption to the happy life they’d had before. But no matter how nice they are, they are still a couple, and he can’t impose on them forever.

Doing the right thing for Chanyeol and Yeonseok means Baekhyun will lose them. Not completely, they’ll still be friends, he doesn’t doubt that, but they won’t be living together, and that’s a huge thing. He would see Chanyeol at work, like he used to, but he’d rarely get to see Yeonseok anymore. The idea makes his heart hurt.

But he’s a grown man. He shouldn’t be so dependent on physical displays of affection. He should be able to handle living alone.

But what if he can’t? What if he slips again? What if the depression comes back? What if the psychosis…

He tastes the coppery tang of blood. He’s worried at his lip without realising, torn off a scrap of skin that’s started to bleed. He blinks hard and licks the hint of blood away, forces himself to do up the rest of his buttons.

Back in the bathroom he uses the hairdryer to dry his hair. It’s in good condition again now that he’s eating properly, soft and sleek like it used to be, so he doesn’t need any product. He lets it fall in soft strands over his forehead, pats a little moisturizer into his skin, and eyes his reflection critically.

He wants to look nice for this evening. Lu Han is so beautiful. Baekhyun knows he’s not beautiful, but he still wants to look as nice as he can. He knows Chanyeol has some makeup in the drawers under the sink, toner and eyeliner and mascara, nothing excessive. He’s seen Chanyeol wearing it sometimes, just in the evenings, for Yeonseok’s eyes only - except that Baekhyun’s here as well now, so he gets the benefit of a smoky-eyed Chanyeol too. Baekhyun thinks it looks amazing. He could ask Chanyeol to help him put some on. He doesn’t want it to be too much.

It doesn’t occur to him to wonder why he wants to look beautiful for Lu Han.

When he walks into the kitchen again, he finds Yeonseok has taken his defrosted jiggae out of the microwave and is now heating it up in a pan for him. Baekhyun slides up beside him, skating on the slippery floor in his socks.

“Aw, thanks,” he says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.” Yeonseok turns his head to smile at him. “You’re going out again soon, right?”

“Yeah.” Baekhyun hip-checks him to make him move aside. Yeonseok moves obligingly, not because Baekhyun actually has any chance of making him move if he didn’t want to. “I’m going to a lecture out at the convention centre in Anyang.” He takes the bubbling soup off the heat, and Yeonseok places a bowl on the counter beside him. “Thanks. You want some?”

“No thanks. Chanyeol and I ate already,” Yeonseok says. “How are you getting to Anyang?”

“My friend Lu Han is driving us.” Baekhyun tips the jiggae into the bowl and puts the pan in the sink, then slides across to sit at the breakfast bar. Yeonseok follows and sits down beside him.

“Be careful driving,” he says. “We might have to close the highways if the water gets much higher. I’m on high alert for the Jamsil Bridge. If it reaches 6.5 metres, I’ll have to go out and enforce closure.”

Baekhyun grimaces sympathetically. It can’t be fun being a police officer in times like this. “You think they’ll declare a state of emergency?” he asks, slurping broth from his spoon loudly. “Oh my God, this is amazing.”

Yeonseok laughs. “You made it with me.”

“I don’t think my contribution was all that much,” Baekhyun says. “Chopping the tofu and the spring onions doesn’t make the flavour.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Yeonseok says, back to the state of emergency question. “I hope not, but given that the rain isn’t meant to ease off at all, it might get to that point. The main worry is that last time we had rain like this, North Korea released their excess dam water, and it pushed our ends of the rivers to overflow. We’re hoping they won’t do that again, but of course, we have no way of stopping them.” He reaches over and snags a bit of tofu from the surface of Baekhyun’s bowl with delicate fingertips.

“You said you already ate!” Baekhyun protests, mouth full. Yeonseok just laughs at him and pops the cube of tofu in his mouth.

“I’ll need all the energy I can get if I end up spending the night redirecting bridge traffic in the rain.”

“Where’d Chanyeol go?” Baekhyun asks. “I think I flustered him by barging in. Or, well, flustered him even more than you’d already done.” He smirks at Yeonseok, who smacks the back of his head gently.

“Showering,” Yeonseok says. “He has a shift this afternoon too. It was probably a good thing you came in when you did, to be honest.”

“I am sorry, though,” Baekhyun says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s your house, after all. I don’t want to make you guys feel like you have to change just because I’m here. You already had to do that so much when I was sick.”

“It’s okay,” Yeonseok says easily, and swipes another cube of Baekhyun’s tofu.

Baekhyun focuses on his next mouthful of soup. He believes Yeonseok, he’s not the kind of guy to say things he doesn’t mean, but he still feels a little bad about the whole thing.

Chanyeol comes back in, damp-haired and smelling of something pine-foresty. Baekhyun can’t resist giving him a wink, and is rewarded by the sight of Chanyeol flushing scarlet once again.

“Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Byun Baekhyun,” he grumbles, flopping down onto the stool on Baekhyun’s other side and snaking a long arm towards his bowl. Baekhyun smacks his hand with a cry of protest.

“What is it with you two? You both already ate and you’re stealing my lunch?”

Chanyeol cradles his hand to his chest like Baekhyun has mortally wounded him. “Fine, let me starve to death,” he complains. “When you know I inherited the Park family metabolism…”

Baekhyun stills as Chanyeol trails off. It’s been two weeks since Chanyeol’s mother kicked him out, and he’s still very sensitive about family matters. Baekhyun has willingly taken on the task of showing Chanyeol just how much he’s loved, hugging him at every opportunity, and he knows Yeonseok is doing the same, but nothing can really ease the pain of being rejected by one’s own mother.

“You may have inherited hollow legs and a bottomless pit of a stomach, but I have to fuel my muscles,” he retorts, not wanting the atmosphere to degenerate. He lifts his arm and attempts to flex his bicep. “See this? It’s like a rock.”

Chanyeol and Yeonseok snort simultaneously. “A rock? More like a pebble,” Chanyeol teases.

“More like a bit of gravel,” Yeonseok adds, and Baekhyun wails loudly about how cruel they both are, basking in their attention and laughter.

“Um, you guys,” he says a little later when his soup is finished and he’s rinsing his bowl and pot in the sink ready to go in the dishwasher. Chanyeol and Yeonseok look up from the breakfast bar simultaneously. Baekhyun knows they’ve heard the hint of uncertainty in his voice. “I just wanted to say that I’m really grateful for all you’ve done for me. I honestly don’t think I’d have made it without you guys.” Chanyeol looks like he wants to say something, but Yeonseok puts his hand on top of his, stilling him. “I love living with you but I don’t want to turn into something that’s a burden or in the way,” Baekhyun continues. His voice is shaking a little, with nerves, and with how much he means what he says. “I know I’m better now and I should really grow up and get a life of my own, but...the problem is, I just don’t know if I can handle living on my own just yet. I know I’m super needy and it must be annoying, and you guys are so generous with touch and love...but...I just don’t know if I can handle being on my own again. I don’t want to put all my problems on you though. I guess I just wanted you to know that...I’m not taking advantage of you and I’m thinking about it. And I’ll try and figure something out so that this isn’t forever…” he trails off, realising he’s babbling, and looks down at his hands. He’s twisted them together in his anxiety without even realising. “Sorry. I’m not even making sense, am I?”

Chanyeol stands up and comes around the bar into the kitchen. He opens his arms and Baekhyun steps into them, relief flooding through him as Chanyeol’s arms go around him. The shaky, empty feeling inside him immediately quells.

“Baekhyun, you’re not in the way, and you’re not a burden.” Baekhyun presses his head hard to Chanyeol’s chest, feeling the gentle vibrations as he speaks. “Didn’t I tell you that, before? You could never be that. You’re family to me.” His voice cracks, just a little, on the word. “Even if you want to stay here forever, that’s fine with me.”

“And me,” Yeonseok says from the bar. “Family to Chanyeol is family to me. You’re a lovely person, Baekhyun. We love having you with us.”

“Even when I walk in on your make-out sessions?” Baekhyun asks in a small voice. Chanyeol gives a strangled squawk, and Yeonseok laughs out loud.

“Maybe Chanyeol would prefer we keep those in the bedroom,” Yeonseok says. “But it’s okay. Flat-sharing with any couple would be the same.”

“You guys are the best,” Baekhyun says, sniffling a little.

Chanyeol holds him until all the shakiness inside Baekhyun is hugged away. Then Yeonseok gets a call that the river has just reached 6.5 metres and they have to close the Jamsil Bridge. He goes to get changed into his wet-weather police uniform of thick yellow PVC jacket and pants with reflective strips.

“Be careful out there, babe,” Chanyeol says, kissing him goodbye at the door.

“I will. Oh, and Baekhyun,” Yeonseok says just before he steps out. “If the conditions get too bad out in Anyang, you and your friend should stay there overnight. Don’t try to drive back if it’s dangerous.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun says, waving Yeonseok goodbye. When he’s gone, he turns back to Chanyeol. “Hey, do you want to do makeup on me?”

Chanyeol stares at him like Baekhyun has just grown a second head. “Eh?”

Baekhyun laughs at his expression. “Like how you sometimes wear makeup for Yeonseok. You’re good at it, but I haven’t a clue. I’d probably end up looking like a teenage drag queen.”

Chanyeol stammers a little, then finds his senses. “Well, I mean, sure. I can do your eyes for you. But why? You’ve never worn makeup before, not even to clubs. This is just a plastic surgery lecture, right?”

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun hums, spinning away from him and sending him a smile. “I just feel like looking pretty, I guess.”

Chanyeol smiles at that, and takes Baekhyun’s wrist to lead him into the bathroom.

When Lu Han texts Baekhyun to say he’s waiting in the car at the apartment building entrance, Baekhyun is sporting a subtle enhancement to his eyes. It’s not noticeable at a glance, but it’s there, making his eyes look just a little bigger, a little more bright. It makes him feel more confident than he has in a very long time. He’s not sure why he’s never tried this before. Maybe he just never thought of it. Nari would have hated it. She always liked him to be as masculine as he could. Maybe, Baekhyun wonders as he waves happily to Mr. Lee and opens his umbrella for the three steps he has to cross in the downpour to get into Lu Han’s dark red Lexus SUV, maybe he’s been suppressing this part of himself for Nari for too long.

“This weather, Lu Han!” Baekhyun exclaims as he scrambles up into the SUV, shaking the drops from his umbrella onto the floor.

Lu Han laughs, and it makes Baekhyun feel warm inside just to look at him. Lu Han would never need to enhance his beauty with makeup.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Lu Han agrees as he puts his car in gear and drives out. The wipers are going fast, but even so they can barely clear the bucket-loads of water tossing down on them. “I hope the roads don’t close.”

“Jamsil Bridge is closing now,” Baekhyun tells him. “One of my flatmates is a cop. He’s just gone out to redirect traffic.”

Lu Han hums and tunes the radio to the traffic updates station. “I checked with the convention and they say the lectures will still be on, because a lot of participants are already there for the whole convention, not just this lecture.”

“Are you sure you’re happy to drive in this, though?” Baekhyun asks. “I mean, I don’t think I could. I’d hate to miss the lecture but safety is important.”

Lu Han nods. “I’m fine. That’s why I took the SUV and not the Audi. This thing can handle a lot.”

They chat about all kinds of things on the way to Anyang, breaking off to listen every now and then when the radio announces yet another road closure. Usually the drive to Anyang is only half an hour, but Lu Han drives to the conditions, and it’s 45 minutes before they’re pulling up in front of the convention centre. It’s still raining. Baekhyun can’t remember a time it’s rained so much, not even in previous monsoon years. No wonder the rivers are struggling.

“It feels like the Biblical flood,” he says when they’ve hurried across the car park under their umbrellas and are shaking the water from their shoes in the lobby. “Your SUV is like the Ark.”

“With less animals, I hope,” Lu Han laughs. They go to sign in and get their passes for the lecture. While he’s tapping his name and details into the sign-in tablet, Baekhyun becomes aware of Lu Han watching him with a gaze that feels strangely intense. When he glances up questioningly, Lu Han blinks and breaks eye contact. He puts his hand out for the tablet.

“Let’s hurry. It’s almost started. The drive took longer than I thought,” he says, tapping his own name in rapidly.

The lecture is fascinating, well worth the stormy drive, and Baekhyun and Lu Han stay afterwards for a long question and answer session. The convention centre staff step up to announce that there are available rooms in the attached hotel if any day attendees don’t want to travel back, but Lu Han doesn’t pay much heed to this. He leads Baekhyun out and they discuss some of the things the speaker talked about as they make their way towards the lobby. The evening has set in during the lecture and the skies are dark. The lights of the convention centre reflect off the sheeting rain and the standing water in the car park.

“Gosh,” Baekhyun says as he looks out the glass doors. “What do you reckon?”

Lu Han is looking at the road warnings on his phone. “A lot of roads are closed now. They’re asking for essential travel only.” He looks up, gazing out at the driving rain. “The highway between here and Seoul is still okay, though. It’s raised, and the bridges are all high ones.”

“You sure?” Baekhyun asks. “You don’t have to drive back for my sake. We can take the offer of rooms here.”

“The SUV can handle it,” Lu Han says. “I certainly wouldn’t risk it in a sedan though.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun says. Lu Han drove very safely on the way here, and he trusts the other man to know his limits.

Lu Han drives even more slowly on the way home, leaning forward a little as he focuses hard on the road. With it being dark now, the water is refracting the light from the streetlights and headlights, bouncing off the road and the rain and the wet windscreen with the wipers flashing fast and sending water in all directions. Baekhyun can’t even see the road-markings properly, but fortunately there are very few other cars on the road. He assumes most people are sensible enough to stay indoors. Lu Han is quieter than he had been on the way here, more focused, and Baekhyun doesn’t want to distract him, so he keeps quiet too, occupying himself texting Chanyeol about how high the rivers they’re crossing are.

It’s Lu Han who eventually breaks the quiet. He speaks without taking his eyes from the road. “Hey, Baekhyun?”

“Hm?” Baekhyun glances up from his phone.

“Are you wearing makeup?”

Baekhyun freezes for a split second while about a thousand suddenly panicked thoughts crash through him. God, is it too weird? Is Lu Han offended by it? Is it going to be a super awkward car ride now? Should he try and deny it? No, no point. He phrased it as a question but he’s sure he knows. He’s a cosmetic surgeon, there’s no way he wouldn’t be sure.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling as he does so, to keep the sudden uncertainty from his voice. “Is it weird?”

There’s a short silence, during which Baekhyun flicks about ten anxious glances from the front window to Lu Han’s profile. He’s still focused on the road. He looks as beautiful as ever.

“No,” Lu Han says eventually. His voice is pitched lower than it was. Almost liquid. “I like it.”

Baekhyun feels something thrill through him at the molten sound of Lu Han’s voice. It shocks him and excites him at the same time.

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, swallowing. “I kind of like it too.”

“I like it on you,” Lu Han clarifies, voice still low. There’s another long silence, during which Baekhyun, strangely, finds himself thinking of Yeonseok pushing Chanyeol up against the pantry door in the kitchen, pressed together, hands everywhere. He flushes. Is this, he wonders, glad that the dark is hiding the colouring of his face. Is Lu Han…

“Are you gay?” he blurts, then slaps a hand over his mouth so hard it makes a smacking noise. “Oh geez, I’m sorry,” he says, muffled by his own hand. “You don’t have to answer that. It’s just that my flatmates are gay and they like this kind of thing so…oh no, I shouldn’t have said that either, one of them isn’t out yet...fuck. I’m terrible. Shut up, Baekhyun.”

Lu Han laughs, free and easy. “You’re so cute. No, I’m not gay,” he says. Baekhyun takes his hand away from his mouth, blinking. Those two sentences kind of seem to directly contradict each other.

“You’re not?”

“No,” Lu Han says, slowing a little as he navigates a particularly deep looking stretch of water just before a bridge. “I’m bisexual.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun says blankly.

“How about you?” Lu Han asks as he drives carefully onto the bridge.

Baekhyun peers out of his side window at the water rushing by below the rail. This is a tributary of the Han and usually little more than a wide, flat trickle, but it’s so high now it can barely be a couple of metres below the bridge level, dark and turbulent as it glints in the headlights. Far across the other side of the bridge, he can already see that it’s burst the bank. A thick swathe of trees have been half-submerged.

“Me?” He stalls for a moment, still staring at the submerged trees as they slowly crawl along the bridge. He wonders that the river hasn’t uprooted them and washed them away. They are big trees, though. Strong and dense.

“I guess you aren’t gay,” Lu Han says, “because of the way you mentioned your flatmates being so. But are you straight, or…?” he trails off delicately.

Baekhyun swallows again. Once, he would have been sure of his answer. Yes, he is straight. But for some reason, he finds himself questioning that answer now. He’d loved Nari, yes, and he’d had several girlfriends before her. He certainly finds women attractive.

And there was that one senior in high school. Jung Jihoon, tall and curly-haired and with an eye-smile to die for. Handsome as fuck. Charming. Sexy. Perfect in every way. Baekhyun had been….well. In hindsight, Baekhyun might call the way he’d felt about Jung Jihoon a serious crush.

And sitting beside him is Lu Han. Beautiful, yet so strong, so masculine in his manner, his voice, his laugh. Baekhyun finds that very…

“My relationship of 6 years ended about half a year ago,” he says. They’re halfway across the bridge, almost crawling now as sheets of water batter the car. The wind is hurling water up from the river as well as the skies pelting it down from above. “That was with a woman. It...it was a very bad breakup. That was why I…well. I lost my way for a while, back there.” This is hard to talk about. “So I’m not sure if I’m ready to get into anything...like a relationship again. At least not yet.”

“What if it wasn’t a relationship,” Lu Han says, so quietly he can barely be heard over the roaring of the river and the rain. “What if it was just...to try?”

Baekhyun tears his eyes from the submerged trees to glance at him. He meets Lu Han’s eyes flicking briefly across as he does so. They’re dark, dark in the refracted light.

“You’re gorgeous, you know, Baekhyun,” Lu Han says, and Baekhyun feels that shiver again. That thrill.

“I could try,” he says. “I mean...we. We could try. If...if you want that.”

Lu Han’s smile is beautiful. Lu Han smiling even as he leans a little forward over the wheel and stares intently at the waterlogged road is beautiful.

“I do want that.”

“Okay then,” Baekhyun says. He sounds a little strangled. He swallows and stares out at the trees again. They’re nearly over the bridge. Once they’re across here the highway raises higher and should be a lot better. They’ll be safe home soon. He thinks of Lu Han close to him, holding him, touching him. Lu Han thinks Baekhyun is...gorgeous? Baekhyun wouldn’t believe him, but Lu Han thinks so enough to come out to him so he could ask. That means something, in this world, in their society. That means a lot. Baekhyun...Baekhyun is enough that Lu Han would do that.

They’re passing the trees submerged in the river now. Baekhyun’s side is closest to the bridge rail. As he looks out, the headlights reflect off a place where the guardrail has been smashed, the metal ends ripped out and dangling towards the river. Baekhyun glances at it and sudden shock jolts through him.

“Stop!” he cries. “Lu Han, stop!”

“What?” Lu Han brakes carefully. Baekhyun cranes around to look back to where they’ve just passed the broken guard rain, squinting through the lashing rain.

“I saw something in the trees. See where the guard rail is broken? I thought I saw a car lodged in the trees under the bridge.”

Lu Han curses. He slows the car to a stop and twists around to look too. It’s near impossible to see anything through the rain.

“Get the headlights in that direction,” Baekhyun suggests. Lu Han does a u-turn and angles the car to point at the broken guard rail. The lights catch on the bulky shape Baekhyun had glimpsed before. He was right. There’s a car lodged nose-down in the branches of the swathe of submerged trees almost directly below the bridge. The hood of the car is fully submerged. It must have gone through the barrier and gotten caught in the thick branches.

“Has that just happened?” Lu Han grabs his phone from where he’s stuck it in the cup holder. “You think there are people still in the car?”

“We have to check.” Baekhyun is leaning into the back to reach for his rain jacket. “I don’t see any police tape here or anything. It might not have been called in yet.”

“I’ll call it in now.” Lu Han is on his phone. He starts to report their location and what they’re seeing as Baekhyun wriggles into his rain jacket and opens the door. The wind and rain hits him like a wall. He’s almost blown sideways as he battles the few steps towards the edge of the bridge through sidewards-driving rain, lit only by the SUV lights. He yanks the strings of his hood tight around his face, though it probably won’t keep him dry for long. It’s a lightweight summer raincoat, not designed for this amount of water. He reaches the broken guardrail and grabs a portion of it to steady himself, peering down at the back bumper of the car lodged in the trees almost directly below him.

“Police didn’t know,” Lu Han’s voice says, speaking right into his ear. He’s gotten out of the car too. His jacket doesn’t have a hood, and his hair is already plastered to his head. “They say it’ll be at least twenty minutes for a rescue team to get here.”

Baekhyun looks back down at the car. It’s nose-down in the branches and the river is visibly rising. The hood is already fully submerged. The front seats of the car will be next.

“They might not have that long,” he shouts through the wind. “I think the windshield is broken. Anyone in the driver’s seat will have their face underwater in minutes.”

Lu Han steps right up to the edge of the bridge and crouches. Baekhyun’s heart thuds in his chest as he grabs a fistful of the back of Lu Han’s jacket. He’s not sure if he’s strong enough to hold Lu Han if he slips.

“You’re right,” Lu Han shouts. His eyes squint almost shut as he turns into the rain, back towards Baekhyun. “We have to get them out now.”

“How?” Baekhyun inches forward and eyes the trees. The upper branches are barely two metres below the bridge level, but trying to jump into them sounds like a death wish, especially in the dark and wet.

“If we can get them out and get them higher into the tree branches, they’ll be safe until a rescue team get here,” Lu Han says. He stands up from his crouch and steps back. “I have a tow rope in the SUV. If I clip it to the towbar I can climb down -” he’s already running back across the road, his last words lost in the wind and rain. Baekhyun stares after him, heart thumping harder than ever. He doesn’t doubt that Lu Han is right. They have to do something or whoever is in that car is going to drown. But climb down a rope into a tree over rushing flood waters that would drown him almost instantly if he fell?

Lu Han is backing the SUV up to the guard rail. He jumps out and runs to the back, drags out a wide webbed tow rope and tosses it to the ground. “There are chocks,” he shouts to Baekhyun. “Get them out and chock the wheels.” He bends down and clips the metal end of the tow rope to the tow bar, then starts hurriedly tying a knot in the thick webbing, grimacing with effort as he tugs it tight. He’s already soaked to the skin. Baekhyun finds the wedge-shaped chocks in the back and shoves them under the wheels, kicking them in as hard as he can. They will give the vehicle extra stability. Lu Han has left the hazard lights on as well as the headlights. They blink repeatedly orange, reflecting in the driving rain.

Lu Han has tied three knots down the flat tow rope. To help him climb, Baekhyun guesses. “Are you sure about this?” he yells over the massive roaring of the swollen river.

Lu Han looks at him, pale in the reflected gleam of headlights, rain pouring down his face. “We have to try.”

Baekhyun turns back to the river. It’s already visibly higher, lapping at the smashed windshield of the car. Lu Han picks up the tow rope and tosses it over the edge. It falls into the top of the tree directly below. The top branches are perhaps two metres below the bridge level, the back wheels of the nose-down car another two below that, and then the raging, turbulent water. It’s not a long climb. It doesn’t even feel like they’re very high up, because the height of the river is so close to the bridge level. It’s the danger of the river water that’s terrifying, and the howling wind and rain.

Lu Han grabs the rope and sits on the edge of the bridge, legs dangling. Baekhyun crouches beside him, heart in his mouth as Lu Han grips one of the knots he’s made and swings over. He peers down as Lu Han’s drenched head descends down the rope, praying with everything he’s got that he doesn’t slip. Lu Han reaches the top tree branches and grabs them, using both the branches and the rope to work his way down towards the car doors. Baekhyun lies flat on his front as he peers over the edge. He’s already saturated by the rain, a little more water hardly matters. Lu Han braces himself in the branches as he tries to get the rear door on the driver’s side open. The black rushing water looks to be inches from his feet.

Hindered by the branches, Lu Han gets the door open just enough that he can wriggle his lean torso inside. The top half of his body disappears inside the car for about half a minute. Then he pulls back, dragging something bulky out of the car, forcing the door slightly further open as he does so. Baekhyun’s heart seizes when he realises it’s a baby car seat.

How the fuck is Lu Han going to climb up the tree carrying that?

Lu Han turns a white face up to him, and Baekhyun knows. He can’t see Lu Han’s features clearly from here, can’t hear the shouted words as they’re snatched away on the wind and in the roaring of the river, but he knows. He has to climb down too, so that Lu Han can pass the baby seat up through the branches to him.

Baekhyun doesn’t let himself think. If he thinks it through, if he acknowledges just how fucking dangerous what he’s about to do is, he’ll chicken out. He grabs the knot in the tow rope beside him, the same way Lu Han did. He twists around and lets his feet find the second knot. The edge of the bridge grazes his arms and ribs as he wriggles over it. Then he’s clinging to the rope and swinging, swinging as the wind buffets him.

He climbs down, hand over hand. The webbing makes it easy to grip. It’s not so hard, at least not going down. Going up would be another matter, but hopefully he won’t have to. The rescue team will come. They just have to keep the baby and the driver out of the water. Baekhyun reaches the branches and scrapes his way down through them. He's getting scratched on his face and neck by twigs, but he barely notices. All his attention is fixed on Lu Han and the baby seat in his arms. As soon as he’s within reach, Lu Han lifts the baby seat up in both hands. Baekhyun grabs the top handle and hauls it towards him. Lu Han immediately crawls back inside the car, disappearing completely this time.

Baekhyun glances into the baby seat. A pair of round dark eyes stare back at him. The baby can’t be more than three months old. Some drops of rainwater hit its face, and it squinches up and lets out a cawing cry. Baekhyun quickly pulls out the soft blanket the baby is sitting on and drapes it across the top of the seat. Once the rain isn’t hitting the baby’s face, it quiets again.

Baekhyun feels a surge of protectiveness like he’s never felt before. Nothing else matters except for keeping this baby safe. He’s already a good metre higher than Lu Han in the trees, the water two metres below. It will have to be enough, because he can’t climb with the car seat any more than Lu Han could. He pushes the seat up a little higher than his head and wedges it among the branches.

“Baekhyun!” Lu Han shouts his name from below. Baekhyun looks down and whispers a curse. Now Lu Han has a little girl in his arms, maybe four or five years old. Unlike the baby, she’s limp and unresponsive in his arms. He can see the blood coating the side of her face from here. Fucking hell, Baekhyun thinks as he carefully climbs lower. Is there a whole family in this car?

Lu Han lifts the little girl towards him. Baekhyun grabs her beneath the arms and hauls her up towards him. She feels almost weightless. He guesses it’s the adrenaline lending him strength.

“Any more?” he shouts down to Lu Han.

“Just the driver!” Lu Han calls back. “She’s conscious! I’ll try to get her out! Get the kids as high as you can!”

Baekhyun hugs the limp child to his body and struggles one-armed the couple of branches back up to where he left the baby seat. The girl will be getting scratched too, but he can’t help that. Scratches are really the least of her problems. He gets level with the baby seat and braces himself in the branches, panting with effort. He holds the girl to himself with one arm and checks under the blanket.

The baby has fallen asleep. Baekhyun would laugh if he wasn’t so fucking terrified. He wedges himself a little more securely among the branches and cradles the girl in his arms so that he can check her respiration and pulse. She’s breathing well, pulse steady. The cut on her head is shallow and has bled a lot in the way of head wounds, but doesn’t look serious. He checks her head and finds an egg-sized lump just over her right temple. That’s probably the blow that knocked her out, not the cut. She needs medical attention, but for now, she’s stable.

Baekhyun unzips his jacket and holds her close to his chest so that she can share his body heat. The air temperature isn’t particularly cold, but it’s cold enough with all the water. The kid is as soaked as he is, and being wet will chill them much faster. Thank goodness the baby isn’t wet at all. It must have been in the back seats of the car and never gotten submerged.

He glances down. Lu Han has managed to get the mother out and they’re slowly climbing up through the branches. The water has now reached half way up the car. It’s rising so fast. If the mother and the little girl had still been in the front seats, they’d have drowned by now. Baekhyun remembers Yeonseok telling him that North Korea might release their excess dam water. He wonders if that’s what’s happening now, or if it’s all simply from the rain. He hopes the rescue team arrives quickly. They’re higher than the water level now, but if it keeps rising at this rate, the entire tree will be submerged soon, and that would be the end of all of them. Even the bridge itself could go under.

The woman has reached his foot level, Lu Han pushing her from below. His feet are still in the water, but they can’t climb higher now, can’t get past Baekhyun, and there isn’t much tree left anyway. The woman grabs at his ankle desperately, and Baekhyun cries out as he slips a little. He kicks his foot, trying to shake her free without knocking her off balance. If she pulls him down both him and the little girl will be lost. “Let go!” he shouts.

Thankfully, the woman obeys him. “Seongmin,” she gasps, eyes wide and wild as she stares up at him, hair plastered across her face. “Is she okay? She wouldn’t wake up -”

“She’s okay,” Baekhyun calls down. “I’m a doctor. I’ve checked her over and she’ll be okay. She’s got a nasty bump, but she’ll be fine.”

The woman sobs in relief. “And my baby?”

“Fine,” Baekhyun calls. “Baby was awake when I pulled it up, but it’s fallen asleep now. Hasn’t even noticed anything going on.” He smiles at her as best he can. Lu Han has one arm wrapped around her legs and the other around a tree branch in a death grip. Their positions are much more precarious than Baekhyun’s. The water is rising so fast it’s already up to Lu Han’s thighs, the raging current pulling at him.

“Rescue team should be ten minutes out,” Lu Han calls up. His face is strained, white. “We just need to all hang tight till then, okay?”

“I’m good here, and the kids are secure,” Baekhyun shouts back. As long as the river doesn’t rise and the kid’s mom doesn’t make any more grabs for his ankle, he’ll be okay. They’ll all be okay.

The girl in his arms stirs. Baekhyun grips her tighter and looks down as she opens her eyes.

“Seongmin?” he asks. The kid squints up at him, confused and scared. “It’s okay, Seongmin. My name is Baekhyun. You were in a car crash but I’ve got you and you’re going to be okay.”

“Mommy?” she whimpers.

“Mommy’s really close by. Don’t worry, everything’s okay.”

“I’m scared,” she says, and starts to cry. Baekhyun holds her tight and calls down.

“Seongmin’s awake.”

Her mother looks up. “Seongmin, darling?” she calls. Seongmin stops crying, trying to look around.

“Stay still, sweetheart. You hear mommy, right?”

“Mommy…”

“Mommy is really close by. She can see you. You just have to stay with me right now and stay as still as you can so that everyone can be safe. Can you do that? Stay as still and quiet as a little sleeping bunny rabbit for me, okay?”

“Okay,” Seongmin whimpers.

“Seongmin, be good for Baekhyun, good girl,” her mother calls. Lu Han must have told her his name. Seongmin nods minutely. She’s scrunched herself up, curled into him. Baekhyun keeps talking, telling her what a good girl she’s being and how very like a cute sleeping bunny she is, while the wind lashes rain into his back and side. The worst is blocked by the thick foliage of the trees, but it’s still very wet and cold.

Finally there’s a call from above, and lights flash down onto them. Baekhyun feels like he could cry with relief when a rescue worker is lowered down in a proper full harness, head-light flashing as he descends into the tree branches. He takes the baby up first, then Seongmin from Baekhyun’s arms, then the mother. Lu Han has been almost chest-deep in rushing water for the past ten minutes and is visibly shaking as he clings to the tree. Baekhyun scrambles down a little and grabs onto the shoulder of his jacket as best he can.

“Just another few minutes,” he says. “Just hang on, yeah?”

“I’m okay,” Lu Han says, baring teeth in what’s probably meant to be a grin. He’s freezing to Baekhyun’s touch though, and Baekhyun is cold himself. Early stages of hypothermia, despite the relatively warm air. It’s from being in the water.

The rescue worker in his harness gets back down to them and takes Lu Han up, and then it’s just Baekhyun, on his own in the tree. Only the back bumper of the car is above the water now. Those two kids and their mom would have drowned if it wasn’t for Lu Han. Baekhyun clings to the tree and counts aloud. It’s been taking the rescue worker about four minutes to perform each rescue, getting the person up safely to the bridge and back down again, but four minutes feel like four hours when he’s scared, exhausted, freezing, and the river is lapping past his ankles. But eventually the rescue worker is back. Baekhyun squints as his head torch shines in his eyes.

“Okay man, let’s get you clipped in,” the worker says. He expertly wraps a waist belt around Baekhyun, cinches it tight, and snaps a couple of carabiners between him and his own full-body harness. “Grab on.”

Baekhyun grabs hold of the rescue worker and feels strong arms grip him around his waist. The worker shouts up, and they’re winched out of the tree and up towards the bridge. They’re hauled over the lip by many helping hands. On the bridge, Baekhyun finds Lu Han’s red SUV is now surrounded by multiple police cars and civil defence trucks, as well as two ambulances. Lights are flashing everywhere and there are so many people in yellow PVC outfits just like Yeonseok’s, and Baekhyun feels disoriented as he’s unclipped from the rescue worker, swiftly wrapped in a blanket and hurried towards the back of an ambulance.

“I’m okay,” he tries to say, “I’m not hurt,” but his lips feel numb and clumsy, and nobody listens anyway, so it’s easier just to go with them. In the back of the ambulance he finds Lu Han lying flat on his back on the bed, covered in blankets. An EMT is taking his blood pressure.

“Lu Han!” Baekhyun cries, ignoring the second EMT who wants to assess him.

Lu Han opens his eyes and turns his head to meet Baekhyun’s eyes.

“I’m okay,” he says, though his voice jerks a little as he shivers. “A little hypothermic, it seems. You?”

“I’m fine,” Baekhyun assures him shakily. “But that was awful.”

Lu Han laughs weakly. “Agreed. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I never want to do anything like that ever again.”

“You didn’t seem scared,” Baekhyun says. “You went over the edge without even hesitating.”

Lu Han coughs out another laugh. “I was fucking terrified,” he says. “I’m scared of heights.”

Baekhyun’s jaw drops. “No way.”

“Yeah,” Lu Han says through his shivers. “I think I could only do it because I didn’t let myself think it through.”

Baekhyun nods. He gets it. That’s how he felt too.

“What about the family?” he asks the second EMT who is trying to get his attention so he can assess him.

“All in the other ambulance. They’ll all be fine,” he’s told. He nods, relieved, and submits to the EMT’s assessment.

He knows he’s fine, in general. He’s shocked and exhausted, and he has a couple of bad scratches on his face from the tree branches, but nothing permanently damaging. Lu Han is worse off, but they’re working on getting him warmed up as the ambulance takes them into the city. Baekhyun asks them to take them to Hangang. The adrenaline is draining from him, leaving him tearful and shaky. He wants Chanyeol. That was terrifying. He can’t believe what just happened. He needs a hug. Lu Han is a little out of it with his hypothermia, and Baekhyun needs someone to comfort him. His phone is still in the SUV, so he borrows the EMT’s phone to call Chanyeol.

“Chanyeol something really scary just happened,” he blurts out as soon as Chanyeol picks up.

“Baekhyun?” Chanyeol recognizes his voice. “Whose phone is this? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Baekhyun says, even though he doesn’t really sound fine with the way his voice is shaking. “There was an accident by the river and Lu Han and I had to pull some kids out, but we’re okay, but they’re bringing us into hospital anyway, just for the check over, you know how they do that, but it was really, really scary, Chanyeol.”

“Are you coming into Hangang?” He can hear Chanyeol’s footsteps on a linoleum floor.

“Yeah, I asked them to,” Baekhyun says. “We’re about ten minutes out. Can you come meet me in the ED?”

“Of course,” Chanyeol says. “I’ll head down right now.”

So when the ambulance arrives and Baekhyun follows Lu Han’s gurney in on foot through the ambulance doors of the ED, he walks straight into Chanyeol’s arms.

“Oh my God, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says, hugging him tight, then pushing him away to stare at his face. “You’re all scratched up. Are you sure you’re alright? What the hell happened?”

Baekhyun lets his best friend lead him over to a waiting trauma bay and sit him down on the bed so that an ED resident can do a general assessment on him. It’s standard procedure for anyone brought in by ambulance. They’ve taken Lu Han elsewhere, probably to shine heat lamps on him for a while, Baekhyun guesses. Chanyeol sits beside him, an arm around his shoulders as the ED resident takes his blood pressure. Baekhyun leans against him, exhausted and drained and oddly exhilarated.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says.


	32. July 18th

Jongin is late. He glances at the wall clock and tries not to bite his lower lip under his medical mask. He has to stay focused as he ties up the nerve endings in Kwak Songah’s wrist. Her future function all depends on him. The attending specialist hand surgeon, Dr. Cho, stands next to him, following his every move to make sure he doesn’t do anything wrong. Jongin needs to learn from this case, because an opportunity like this doesn’t come every day. It’s a case simple enough that Jongin can learn on it with reasonable safety for the patient, but anything involving suturing nerves is very difficult. Hand surgery is a specialist field, and a possible option for Jongin to specialise in one day, like Dr. Cho, rather than being a general orthopaedic surgeon. He blinks hard, focuses through his binocular loupes and regrips the suture needle. 

Songah was in an accident at her workplace involving a mechanical saw. It’s only sheer luck that she didn’t bleed out then and there from the cut on her wrist that severed the nerve endings. They have already closed up the traumatic amputation of two fingers and all there’s left is to hope for the best possible outcome for function in the remaining fingers as Jongin sutures the nerve endings in the wrist back together. She’s young so there’s reasonable hope that microsurgery will have a good outcome. Otherwise they would have had to do a nerve graft, something Jongin is not ready to do on his own.

As time passes by, Jongin feels himself stress more and more. A bead of sweat rolls down his neck and he takes a deep breath. He forces himself to stare through his loupes. He has just put in the last delicate suture on the nerve when Dr. Cho tells him to stop. Jongin goes still immediately. When he is deep within the body with sharp instruments, any sort of movement might harm the patient.

“I’ll take it from here,” Dr. Cho says. “It’s okay, the microsurgical repair is fine, but I can close up. You seem a little distracted.”

Jongin feels his face go hot as embarrassment crawls up his body. He drops the suture needle into the tray, takes a step back and bows forty-five degrees to his senior, but the other doctor waves him off. There’s a feeling of inferiority gnawing at his chest as he steps out of the OR to take off his surgical scrubs. His hair sticks in every direction from under his cap and Jongin sighs as he pulls it off. He’s so late and he needs a shower. 

He shouldn’t have agreed to do this surgery, knowing that he was pressed for time, but he could hardly refuse when the attending asked him. The doors behind him open when another doctor steps inside, probably about to start preparing for the next surgery in the adjacent OR that shares the scrubbing room. Jongin ducks out of the room and runs up the stairs to the orthopaedic floor, the lifts too slow and too far away from the orthopaedic ward. He’s panting as he throws his doctor’s coat over his office chair haphazardly and just closes the door - he will deal with the mess tomorrow. 

Traffic at this time of day is horrible, as usual, and by the time he finally gets to Sohee’s house, he’s over an hour later than he promised to be. He jumps from the car and runs up the stairs to her first floor apartment, only to get his breath taken away for a second time. Sohee stands in her living room in the most beautiful red dress Jongin has ever seen. His heart skips a beat and a ‘wow’ that might be him sounds throughout the apartment. Sohee turns around where she’s standing and lets her hands down over her stomach, one creeping over and trying to subtly hide her midsection. She sends him a smile, but her eyes are anxious.

“Is it okay?” she asks. Jongin feels dumbstruck, like all his words have been stolen and there’s no way to get them back. Sohee grabs a stray lock of hair and twists it around her finger. She hunches her shoulders just slightly, curls in on herself. 

“It’s more than okay. You look beautiful,” he tells her and walks closer. Sohee lets go of her hair and walks into his embrace, hiding her face in his shoulder. She’s styled her hair too, wavy curls falling from her high ponytail and down her neck. He’s rarely seen her in anything but jeans or her zookeeper’s khakis. He didn’t even know she owned a dress. Did she buy it specially?

“But do you think it’s good enough?” she mumbles, and it’s not like her. Sohee never sounds insecure like this. Jongin takes her shoulders and pulls her out of hiding so he can see her properly again.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks. Sohee shrugs and covers her midsection with her hand again.

“Nothing,” she says, but Jongin has figured it out now. 

“Sweetheart, you are absolutely gorgeous, but you don’t have to wear a dress if you’re not comfortable,” he tells her. Sohee shakes her head, curls bopping behind her.

“It’s the Signiel Seoul, I have to wear a dress! I can’t show up in a place like that looking like I just got out of the lion enclosure, and you’ll be wearing that fancy ass suit you left here the other night, I don’t want to let you down...” 

Jongin kisses her to stop the flow of worried words, then pulls back to look her in the eye. She sends him a stubborn look, but this time she isn’t going to win.

“You don’t have to wear a dress if you don’t want to, and you wouldn’t let me down even if you were dressed in bin bags,” he tells her. She giggles and smacks his shoulder. That’s better, he thinks. “What about that nice suit you have?”

Sohee wrinkles her forehead. “Which suit?”

Jongin lets go of her and leaves her in the lounge to go through her wardrobe. He has seen the jacket in the closet before, but it seems to have disappeared as he goes through all her clothes. 

“The one with the black and white jacket,” he says, continuing to look for it. When she places a hand on his shoulder he turns to look at her. She has a relieved look on her face.

“Do you really think it would be okay? I know girls are supposed to wear dresses to places like this, but I really do hate them and I don’t want to make a bad impression...” 

Jongin smiles at her. “Sohee, I promise you, it’s fine. Taeyeon will love you no matter what you’re wearing.”

Sohee smiles, and Jongin feels oddly shy as he looks at her, still in the red dress. It suits her beautifully, but her comfort and happiness makes her even more beautiful.

“I’ll find a suit I like and you go take a shower,” she tells him and runs her fingers through his disaster hair. Jongin catches her hand.

“Don’t, it’s so gross, I was in surgery for hours...oh my god,” he suddenly remembers how late that surgery had made him. “We’re so late, oh my god -”

Sohee laughs and lets go of him to push him towards the bathroom. “Don’t panic, just go shower,” she calls after him.

Jongin showers at top speed, drying his hair with a towel as he steps into the bedroom to find his suit. Sohee is in front of her full-length mirror, dressed in a black suit. She’s wearing black flats and looks a lot happier as she puts a pin in her hair. She turns around when she notices Jongin in the mirror and he sees the suit jacket has a pattern of black and white on one side. 

“That’s the one I meant!” he tells her excitedly. She chuckles, her eyes scrunching up in happiness, and she’s even more gorgeous than he’s ever seen her before. He reaches out towards her to bring her closer, but she evades his embrace and pokes his bare chest.

“You need to get dressed, baby,” she tells him. Jongin nods rapidly and grabs his shirt, watching her leave the bedroom as he shoves his arms into his sleeves. He’s crazy in love with her and he can’t wait for Taeyeon to meet her.

They leave her apartment about fifteen minutes later than they’d originally planned. Jongin knows Taeyeon will understand about surgery, but he still feels bad. It’s her birthday and he didn’t want to be even a little bit late. Sohee tells him about a new playground they’ve been constructing for the lions and Jongin listens carefully as he drives, memorising the details and picturing the construction in his mind. He loves hearing her talk about the zoo, perhaps now more than ever, and when he casts a quick glance at her, he can see her passion radiating. She’s talking animatedly with her hands, describing big logs and horses made of soft wood. 

They reach Songpa-gu and as Jongin parks in front of the main entrance to LOTTE World Tower, Sohee’s jaw drops. She looks around nervously as she steps out of the car and wraps her arms around her. Jongin hands the valet his car keys, who takes them and bows ninety degrees. Jongin takes Sohee’s hand and leads her through the grand marble entrance. Sohee looks around, wide-eyed. Her curiosity is adorable. He squeezes her hand and she looks back at him, awed. 

“This place is ridiculous,” she whispers as they wait for the golden lift doors to open. Jongin chuckles. 

“I guess it is a little extravagant,” he says. Sohee nods fervently as the lift arrives and they step inside. 

“It’s crazy. What kind of people can even afford to stay in such a place?” 

Jongin smiles a little awkwardly and presses the button that will take them to the 76th floor. A second later Sohee gasps and turns to face him with horror in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean -” she starts but Jongin shakes his head and smiles. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her. He feels - not exactly nervous, because he trusts and knows his family will accept Sohee with all the same openness they accepted him and all the emotional damage he came with, but still somewhat on edge. It’s just strange being back in the world of the upper class he left behind, but he has Sohee beside him now, and that makes all the difference.

The lift doors open to a grand hall and a reception desk at the far end of the room. A beautifully dressed couple sit on lounge chairs and look out over the Seoul skyline as they sip from glasses of wine. Sohee turns her head from side to side, trying to take in everything at once. Jongin gently pulls her with him as he walks towards the reception desk.

“Hello,” he greets the woman behind the desk. “We’re here for Lee Taeyeon’s private party.” She asks for their names before nodding and typing into her computer. 

“It’s held in STAY on the 81st floor. Someone will escort you in a minute,” she tells them and Jongin nods politely before he feels Sohee tug on his fingers. They slip from his a second later and she walks towards the large windows. When she turns back around towards him, there’s a large grin on her face. 

“Seoul looks beautiful from up here,” she tells him and then notices a man looking towards her with a disapproving gaze. Her cheeks redden. Jongin walks towards her and turns to look over the city skyline with her, a hand securely wrapped around her waist as he agrees with her. 

“Don’t let the assholes get you down,” he whispers in her ear. Sohee hides a giggle behind her hand, but presses a little closer to him. A man in a black suit meets them a minute later and takes them to the small private room Taeyeon has reserved in the restaurant. All six occupants in the room turn towards them when they enter. Taeyeon sends them a large warm smile and hurries towards them. She’s dressed in a royal blue dress that suits her perfectly, silver hair in a bun like always.

“Jongin, you made it,” she says and reaches out to embrace him. “I was beginning to wonder if the OR had swallowed you alive.” There’s teasing in her voice, but it softens when she turns to Sohee with a kind smile. “And this must be Sohee.”

Sohee nods and bows, smiling brightly as she straightens up, but Jongin can tell she’s nervous. Taeyeon introduces herself and the rest of the family to Sohee. Her husband Namgi, and Taehee and Taeah. Jongin knows Taehee’s husband, Minho, but there’s another man beside Taeah that he doesn’t recognize. Jongin raises his eyebrow at Taeah and she blushes. Jongin grins delightedly. For once he might actually not be on the receiving end of all the teasing tonight.

Taeyeon ushers them to the table. Sohee seems so small next to him in all the luxury, as if she shrinks, and he grabs her hand under the table, links their fingers and squeezes gently. 

“So, Sohee,” Namgi starts and folds his hands on the table. “What do you do for a living?” 

It turns out that Namgi has visited a few zoos around the world and he’s very interested as Sohee starts to talk about her occupation. The more she talks about the predators she looks out for on a daily basis, the more comfortable she gets, until she lets go of Jongin’s hand so she can mime a particular gesture the cheetahs did earlier this week. Satisfied that Sohee is doing fine, Jongin turns to Taeah and pokes a finger into her side. She glares at him, but that doesn’t stop him.

“Who is he?” he whispers in her ear. 

“His name is Kangjoon,” she whispers back. Jongin raises an eyebrow and pokes her again. A name is not enough. They’ve started dating recently, she explains in a whisper, and mom insisted she invited him here. Kangjoon looks comfortable, so Jongin guesses this isn’t the first time he’s meeting the family. 

As the appetizer is served, Jongin glances towards his girlfriend. She’s so caught up in her conversation with Namgi and Minho that all the awe that was there when they entered the tower has disappeared, and the happy brightness that is so Sohee is radiating off of her. Jongin knew she was going to be loved. Taeyeon sends him a knowing smile over the table and this time it’s him who flushes scarlet, much to Taeah’s joy. She prods and pokes at his ribs until he gives in and turns to pout at her, making her giggle delightedly at having gotten the reaction she wanted.

The dinner passes by full of pleasant conversation. Jongin tells Taeyeon about the microsurgical repair he’d been doing a couple of hours earlier and they spend thirty minutes talking about orthopaedics until Taehee interrupts them and begs them not to talk about work anymore. He hears all about Taehee’s twin girls and how much they’ve grown, and Namgi and Minho invite Jongin to a game of golf that he politely declines. 

When the meal is over, they move to the lounge area for coffee. Taeyeon has rented out a section of the lounge and the waiters arrive with small cupcakes. Sohee sits next to him with a smile and rests a hand on his thigh. Jongin ignores the sly looks Taehee and Taeah send him, until suddenly Taehee pipes up with the question of how Jongin and Sohee met. 

Sohee turns around in her seat to grin at him before turning back to his sisters. Jongin feels the colour creep up his neck at the memory of their first meeting.

“It’s not interesting,” he tries, but Taeyeon has tuned in now. She shushes him and takes a sip of her coffee. 

“I’d love to hear it!” she says and Sohee smiles. She shifts in her seat and leans against him. Her fingers start drawing random circles on his knee. 

“It was raining so hard and this one had forgotten his umbrella,” Sohee starts, and Jongin interrupts as Taehee and Taeah start giggling already.

“The one day in June when it’s raining! It wasn’t fair to expect me to think of an umbrella,” he protests and Taeyeon chuckles. Sohee rolls her eyes but there’s a soft smile on her lips as she explains how they’d met in front of a café, Jongin staring sadly at the rain trying to figure out how to get to the subway without getting soaked. Sohee had been carrying an umbrella and she’d offered him to share. Jongin had followed her to the bus stop, only to be caught with another dilemma when the distance to the subway station was still too long to cover without getting soaked. Taehee laughs at the image and Jongin pouts again. He’d ended up riding the bus with Sohee, wound up in the wrong part of the city, but with red cheeks, a heart skipping a beat and a new number in his phone - all of which was really Sohee’s doing because he’d been too shy to even hope to meet her again. 

Taeah coos at the story. “It’s just like a romantic drama,” she says and her sister agrees. Jongin goes redder than ever and jumps on the opportunity to get back at her by asking her how she met Kangjoon. 

As the sun sets and the hand on the clock slowly moves towards midnight, the birthday party starts to let up. They’ve said goodbye to Taehee and Minho and Taeah and Kangjoon when Taeyeon pulls Jongin into an embrace. His arms sneak around her as he reciprocates the hug.

“Happy birthday,” he tells her and she smiles at him when she lets go. 

“You look very happy, Jongin,” she says, quiet enough that he knows it’s for his ears only.

He smiles. “I am.”

“Sohee is a wonderful woman,” Taeyeon says. “I’m glad you’ve found someone that makes you so happy.” There’s a sincerity in her words, a deep understanding and love that so far has only shown itself when he’s needed her in times of despair. But right now, he’s the happiest he has ever been and she sounds proud of him. 

“Thank you,” he says and looks towards the floor, shyness creeping over him. Sohee joins them then, leans into his side and links their fingers. 

“Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Lee,” she says. Taeyeon reaches out and takes her free hand with both hands, a warm smile on her lips. 

“You are always welcome, Sohee,” Taeyeon tells her and Sohee smiles impossibly bright. Jongin feels warmth spread in his entire body. 

Sohee looks at Jongin. “Are you ready to go home?” 

Jongin nods. He turns back towards Taeyeon, whispers a last ‘thank you’ towards her and she sends them off with a smile. 

When they sit in the car, Jongin leans over the gearbox and kisses Sohee square on the lips. She stops mid sentence in surprise before she relaxes into the kiss. 

“I love you.” The words tumble their way out of him when he lets go, too raw to stop. Sohee just looks at him with wide eyes like a deer caught in headlights. Time slows between them and Jongin feels anxiety grip him. A faint echo of the last person he’d spoken those words haunts him, and for a moment he feels like he can’t breathe.

Sohee’s eyes get wet. “You’ve never said it to me like this before,” she whispers. A lump of shy words jumble up in Jongin’s throat and he doesn’t even know where to start to explain. Sohee puts a finger on his lips and stops them from trying to form impossible words and she sends him a smile before she leans over the gearbox to kiss him as well.

“It’s okay. I know,” she whispers. “And I love you too. More than anything in the whole world.”

Jongin feels tears creep into his own eyes, and they bump noses softly before kissing again. When they pull away, he starts the car and begins the drive back towards her apartment. 

“I told you they’d love you even if you were wearing bin bags,” he tells her a few minutes later, when he finally finds his way to his voice again. Sohee snorts. 

“You’re silly,” she mumbles but when he glances at her, he sees her smiling out at the night sky. 

\---

Jongdae taps politely on the ward room door before sliding it open, glancing at the printed name slip in the slider as he does and comparing it with the patient record on his tablet. They match, so he looks up from his tablet as he enters, ready to greet his patient, but the friendly smile he’d been preparing fades from his lips before it’s really arrived. Lee Haejung is lying curled up on her side in the bed, a wad of soaked tissues clutched to her face, shoulders heaving as she sobs. From the look of her flushed, tear-streaked face, she’s been crying for quite some time. 

Jongdae hurries across the room to the bedside. This is the first time he’s met Haejung, but he knows why she’s here, Hongki having passed the case over to him this morning when he’d arrived. Haejung had arrived by transport ambulance at about 3 in the morning, transferred from a tiny rural hospital 100 kilometres out of Seoul. She’d had what in medical terms was called a pre-labour rupture of membranes; her waters had broken at 25 weeks gestation, three months from the baby’s due date. The other thing Hongki had told Jongdae about Lee Haejung was that she was only eighteen years old and had been brought to Hangang alone, no parents, friends or relatives to support her. Hongki hadn’t gotten much more out of Haejung than that, but her situation isn’t hard to guess for either of the obstetricians.

“Haejung, my name is Dr. Kim Jongdae,” he says. “I’m an obstetrician and I’m going to be your doctor while you’re here. Are you in pain?”

Haejung shakes her head, not looking at him as she hides her face in her sodden tissues. Satisfied for now that her crying isn’t caused by a medical issue that needs investigating, Jongdae takes the box of tissues from the cabinet beside the bed, hands her some fresh ones and holds out a hand for the soaked ones. She drops them into his hand and grabs the fresh tissues, burying her face in them. Jongdae drops the old tissues in the trash can beside the cabinet and sits down on the chair beside the bed, facing her. Haejung is his last patient of morning rounds and he can afford to spend a bit of time with her. She’s not in a medically unstable condition, so for now, Jongdae puts examining her on the back burner. 

“Haejung, can you tell me what’s upsetting you?” he asks.

“I’m - scared,” she sobs into her tissues.

“What are you scared about?”

“Is my baby going to die?”

Jongdae’s heart sinks. She ought to have been reassured of this already, and perhaps she has been, but she’s young and scared and alone, arrived in the middle of the night, and might not have been able to take it in. “No, Haejung,” he says. “Not if we can help it. That’s why your local hospital sent you all the way to us. We’ve got an excellent NICU here and we’re going to look after you and your baby and make sure you’re both safe and healthy.”

“What’s happening to me?” Haejung takes the tissues from her face to stare desperately at Jongdae through red, swollen eyes. She’s too young, Jongdae thinks sadly. She shouldn’t be going through this alone. “I don’t understand. I don’t even show much yet. My friends just think I’m getting a bit chubby -” she gives another sob, staring at Jongdae with tragic eyes. “But my waters broke. That means my baby is going to be born, right? And it’s too small. I read about it. 25 weeks is too small to be born safely.” She puts a gentle hand over her abdomen. “I want baby to be okay,” she whispers. 

“Usually, a mother’s waters breaking means she’s ready to go into labour,” Jongdae says. It’s so hard to remain professional right now, when all he wants to do is give this poor kid a hug. “But it’s possible to go weeks or even months after your waters break without going into labour. Because your baby is still so little, we want to keep it inside for as long as we can. That drip in your arm is giving you antibiotics to make sure there’s no infection, and we’re going to keep an eye on you here so that if anything happens, we can fix it right away. With the help of antibiotics, many mothers in your situation can keep the baby inside for another 6 weeks. By then, baby will be big enough to be born safely.”

Haejung seems to calm down a little as she takes this in. “Does that mean I have to stay here for 6 weeks?” she asks.

Jongdae nods, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s the safest thing for you and baby. But you can walk around the hospital and the garden in the grounds if you want to, and you can bring anything into the room that would help you feel more comfortable. Is there anyone you’d like to come visit you?.”

Haejung sighs. She rolls onto her back against the raised bedhead, staring up at the ceiling. “Nobody would want to visit me,” she says. “I’m a slut.”

Jongdae hides his wince. “Don’t say that about yourself,” he says gently. “That’s a hard word.”

“It’s true, though,” Haejung says. She’s not crying anymore. Now that her fears about her baby have been allayed, she looks resigned. “It was a party. I was drunk. I went with the first boy who wanted me.” She bites her lip. “I don’t even know his name. If that’s not a slut, I don’t know what is.”

Jongdae’s heart aches for her. It’s not really his job to get into the emotional state of his patients, but Jongdae knows only too well how it is to feel alone, to have nobody to talk to, nobody to listen. The least he can do is be a listening ear for Haejung. She doesn’t seem to mind that she’s only just met him as she continues to talk. It’s not uncommon. He’s a doctor, and most people trust doctors, and from the sounds of it, she’s had nobody to talk to about all this. 

“I’m supposed to be a good girl. Everyone will be so disappointed in me. My parents kicked me out, you know...I’ve been staying with my grandparents, but they can’t come to Seoul, they’re too old. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my teachers when I don’t show up to school on Monday...” she trails off, looking back at him worriedly. “Dr. Kim, If I can’t go to school for six weeks, how am I going to take my exams? How am I going to get into university?”

“Girls in your situation often study via correspondence,” Jongdae tells her. “I’m sure arrangements can be made with your school to get your schoolwork to you.”

“They’ll find out if I do that,” Haejung says, staring tiredly back at the ceiling. “I don’t want anyone to know. I can’t bear it.”

“I’ll get a social worker to come and talk to you about your options,” Jongdae tells her. “Don’t worry. I know you feel alone right now, but you’re not the only girl this has happened to. There are lots of things we can do to help.” 

He thinks of Soomin, of how much she’s helped him. She’s a psychotherapist for the staff, not the patients, but Jongdae is sure that if he asked her, she’d come and talk to Haejung for him. He wants to help, but he thinks Haejung needs more emotional support than he can give her, especially since she doesn’t have the support of her family or friends. He resolves to ask Soomin to visit as soon as he can, and moves on to examine Haejung. 

He leaves Haejung, if not exactly happy, at least not in tears anymore as she watches the TV he turned on for her. That ends his morning ward rounds. He’s 20 minutes behind, but it doesn’t matter too much, because he’d scheduled an hour of documentation between ward rounds and lunch and he really doesn’t mind losing documentation time. On his way back to the office, he’s startled to find Dr. Oh Yohan standing at the nursing station, chatting amiably with one of the nurses. Wondering what on earth the chief of staff is doing in ob-gyn, Jongdae stops and gives the distinguished-looking nephrologist a polite bow.

“Ah, Dr. Kim,” Dr. Oh’s smooth, deep voice says above him. “Just who I was wanting.”

Apprehension kindles in Jongdae’s chest as he straightens and looks up at the taller man. He’s been nervous of Dr. Oh ever since he’d almost lost his grip in front of him at the M&M conference last year.

Dr. Oh asks him if he has time to come to his office, and Jongdae agrees, following him to the elevators to go up to the nephrology floor. He responds as cheerfully as he can to the older doctor’s small talk while worries flood through him. Dr. Oh saw Jongdae completely space out during his M&M presentation, witnessed him doing the awful shaking voice thing that makes him sound so tearful when he speaks in front of an audience. He’s sure to know that Jongdae collapsed and was forced to take two weeks’ leave. What if he thinks Jongdae might lose it in an operating theatre, be a danger to his patients? What if he thinks he can’t do his job? All the stress that Jongdae had released over the two weeks down in Seoraksan with his family comes flooding back to him, until by the time they’re on the nephrology floor and entering Dr. Oh’s office, it’s all he can do not to shake.

Dr. Oh’s office is about three times the size of Jongdae’s and has a small meeting table in it. The chief of staff takes a file from his desk, sits at the table and gestures to Jongdae to take a seat too. Jongdae sits across from him, trying desperately not to let it show how tense he is. He runs through possibilities in his head, thinks of things he might be able to say to convince Dr. Oh that he isn’t a liability, that he can do his job, and do it well. He has to stay calm, no matter what. Showing his anxiety now will only reinforce to Dr. Oh that he can’t handle stressful situations.

Dr. Oh looks at him, and perhaps Jongdae has already failed in this task, because the stern, craggy features of his face soften just a little, and Jongdae is suddenly but vividly reminded of the twinkle in the man’s eye when he’d been dressed as Santa Claus at the Christmas party. The image is so incongruous with the current setting that Jongdae has to bite down an urge to inappropriately giggle. That would really prove to Dr. Oh that he’s a mature, capable adult, he thinks wryly.

“Don’t worry, this is nothing bad,” Dr. Oh tells him, and yes, Jongdae has definitely failed. The chief of staff’s words do little to allay his fears. That could mean anything. He needs to know the facts, to know why the chief of staff has pulled him off the ward and brought him to his office.

“As you’re aware, we’ve been actively recruiting for the obstetrics and gynaecology department for the past 6 weeks,” Dr. Oh says. “Your department now has an appropriate number of staff, and Dr. Jung has been acting chief. Dr. Jung and I have been discussing the options for a new department chief, and we’ve decided that we’d like to offer you the opportunity of a promotion.”

Jongdae stares at him blankly. It’s so completely opposite to what he was expecting to hear that he can’t quite take the words in. 

“You’ve worked at Hangang for eight years, since your internship, and you’ve consistently gone above and beyond your role during that time,” Dr. Oh continues. “Especially during the understaffing situation. Your junior colleagues have mentioned how you take on extra shifts yourself so that they won’t be overworked. The ability to see the needs of multiple staff below you and address the situation is something we want to see in a department chief.”

Jongdae is still blinking. “I’m...honoured that you’re considering me,” he says, rather dazedly. He has no idea what to think. The idea of being promoted was so far from his mind that he’s never even considered it. He’s been firmly under the thumb of Dr. Heo for his whole career. He never dreamed he’d be noticed, let alone considered for a management role.

Dr. Oh opens the file and talks Jongdae through the role and its responsibilities, and the salary increase he’d receive. Jongdae tries to take it all in, but it’s hard to get past his state of shock. He doesn’t know what to think. He should probably be thrilled - getting a promotion is supposed to be a good thing, after all - but it’s all too sudden, too far out of anything he’s ever thought of.

“Can I have some time to think it over?” he asks when Dr. Oh is finished. “I’m truly grateful that you’re considering me, but this is a big decision…”

“Of course,” Dr. Oh says. “I wasn’t expecting you to make a decision right away. Take those away and think it over for a few days, and let me know.”

Jongdae stands up and bows a respectful 45 degrees, takes the file from the table and heads back out into the hallway. He feels dazed. He’s rarely been to the nephrology floor, and when he passes a small waiting area, a couple of couches tucked into a corner and surrounded by leafy potted trees, he just sits down there rather than trying to make his way back down to the ob-gyn floor, not even seeing the curious glances he gets from the passing nephrology nurses and residents. The file feels heavy in his lap. He looks down at it, tracing the yellow cover idly with his fingertips. He doesn’t understand what Dr. Oh is seeing in him. How can he think Jongdae is a good fit for a managerial position? Jongdae, who was so conditioned into thinking the bullying and abuse from his boss was normal that he let it go on for eight years? Jongdae, who breaks down when forced to speak in public? Jongdae, who was so unable to manage his own stress that he ended up collapsing? It would make more sense for Dr. Oh to fire him, Jongdae thinks unhappily, not promote him.

After a while, his phone vibrating draws him out of his inner conflict. Chanyeol and Baekhyun are posting back and forth in the group chat, discussing lunch. Jongdae watches them hash it out until they come to a decision - kimbap in the roof garden in half an hour, Chanyeol to bring the kimbap - and then both of them simultaneously message _Jongdae???_

 _Sounds good to me,_ Jongdae messages back. He gives up on any hope of getting his documentation done - his mind is too scattered to cope with that right now - and gets up to go to the roof garden. The other two won’t be there for half an hour yet, but maybe the fresh air will clear his head. 

On the roof, he heads over to the high wall at the edge and leans his arms on it, gazing out over the city. The air is thick and humid, and the sky is heavy, but at least it’s not raining, for once. The monsoon rains that caused such bad flooding a couple of weeks ago have eased somewhat, but the Han still runs brownish-yellow with silt washed down from the mountains. He tries to stop thinking about the promotion. It’s distressing and confusing and huge. Being department chief will change his life, and Jongdae was only just getting to the point of balancing his current life properly. He feels like the floor has just been pulled from under his feet, setting him up for yet another fall.

“Jongdae, over here!” Baekhyun’s voice calls cheerfully. Jongdae pushes back from the wall and turns to see Baekhyun waving at him, Chanyeol in tow as they head to sit on one of the picnic benches surrounded by the ornamental trees in their boxed beds. He heads over as they sit down and start unpacking several foil-wrapped kimbap rolls, laying the pieces out on a smoothed-out piece of foil. Jongdae sits down next to Chanyeol, opposite Baekhyun.

“Hey guys,” he says. 

Both of them glance up from laying out the food to look at him, concern immediately registering on their faces. They’ve both been ridiculously protective of him since he came back to work, and Jongdae groans internally. He’s not sure how they managed to figure out something was wrong just from his voice, but he’s only just managed to convince them he’s really fine, and he doesn’t want to blow all that now. Baekhyun’s so much better, and Chanyeol has been working through his parental issues with the love and support of Yeonseok and his friends, but Jongdae still doesn’t want to stress them out any further by being a headcase over a problem that for anyone else surely wouldn’t even be a problem. 

“What’s up?” Baekhyun asks. He’s still got healing scratches across his face from his insane, heroic stunt two weeks ago. Jongdae still shudders to think of it, of how dangerous it was, and how easily they could have lost Baekhyun just after finally getting him back.

“Not much,” Jongdae says, aiming for airy lightness. He reaches for a set of the wrapped wooden chopsticks Chanyeol has tipped out of the bag. “How are you guys doing?”

“Oh no you don’t,” Chanyeol says. “You don’t get to do that. Not anymore.”

“Tell us what’s wrong,” Baekhyun says. “Is it stressful being back at work?”

Jongdae feels like banging his head down onto the table, but that would not be a good way to convince his best friends that he’s okay. He sighs instead, giving up on the idea of trying to fob them off. They know him too well, and his so-called ‘problem’ is really not as bad as anything they’re probably imagining. 

“I got offered a promotion,” he says. “They want me to be the department chief.”

Baekhyun and Chanyeol stare at him.

“Wait, that’s what has you looking like your dog just died?” Baekhyun asks.

“I don’t have a dog,” Jongdae says petulantly. Baekhyun sticks his tongue out at him. Next to Jongdae, Chanyeol starts to laugh. He puts his arm around Jongdae’s shoulders and gives him a quick squeeze. 

“Shouldn’t we be saying congratulations, then?” he asks. “Not trying to cheer you up?”

“I know it’s a good thing,” Jongdae says. “But I don’t understand why Dr. Oh thinks I’m good enough. I mean, I was so bad at managing myself that I drove myself into collapse. What makes him think I can manage a whole department?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Baekhyun says. “You were doing your best the only way you could. That whole situation was a disaster and you had no power in it. If you were the department chief you would be in a position to prevent things like that from ever happening.”

Jongdae blinks across the table at him.

“Dude, since when did you start making actual sense?” Chaneyol asks, voicing Jongdae’s thoughts perfectly. Baekhyun whines in protest, which Chanyeol ends by picking up a large piece of kimbap in his chopsticks and shoving it into Baekhyun’s mouth. While Baekhyun chews furiously, Chanyeol shifts around to get a better look at Jongdae.

“Much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. You’re great at seeing what needs to be done. I think you’d be a fantastic chief if you put your mind to it,” he says. “But do you want to do it?”

“I don’t know,” Jongdae says. He thinks about what Baekhyun just said. He knows how awful it is to work under a bad chief, and Jongdae would be able to stop anyone else going through what he went through. But he’s not the only person who could do that. Bosses as bad as Dr. Heo are surely the exception, rather than the rule.

“Even if I would be good at it,” he says, “which I’m not convinced of, by the way, there’s a lot of other things to consider. There’s my family. I never want work to end up taking precedence over them again. I just got the whole work-family balance sorted again, and being the chief would mean a lot of extra responsibility. I’d get a pay rise, but I don’t really need it. And I don’t know if I want to be in charge. I like seeing patients, and I’d get way less of that. I don’t care about the prestige, and the idea of everyone looking to me to fix things, make sure the place runs the way it should...maybe I’m being selfish, but it sounds really stressful. I don’t want to end up crashing again.”

Baekhyun gets through his enforced mouthful and swallows. “You gotta look after yourself first,” he says. “That’s not being selfish, that’s being smart. It’s okay to decline the promotion if you’re not ready for it.” He smiles at Jongdae, and it’s still so wonderful to see Baekhyun smiling freely again that Jongdae finds his spirits lifting more from that than any of the words he’s actually saying. “You’d have to be the youngest chief in the hospital if you took it. There’s no shame in not being ready.”

“You would be,” Chanyeol agrees. “Kim Minseok is older than you, and he’s by far the youngest department chief here.”

“You should talk to Minseok,” Baekhyun suggests. “He’d be able to give you an idea of what it’s like.”

“That’s actually a really good idea,” Jongdae says. He can definitely do that.

“You don’t have to sound so _surprised_ \- mmmph,” says Baekhyun, halted in his whining for the second time by Chanyeol’s judicious stuffing of kimbap into his mouth. Jongdae laughs as Baekhyun glares daggers at a crowing Chanyeol, chewing aggressively. They're right. He doesn’t need to stress out so much about this.

“Thanks, you guys,” he says sincerely. “I was really getting myself worked up.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Chanyeol tells him, giving him another friendly side hug. Jongdae smiles, his heart suddenly feeling lighter than he can remember feeling in many months. They’ve all gone through so much this year, and for a while Jongdae thought he had lost the support of the two best friends he’s ever had. But they’re coming out of the other end of the darkness now, and even though the heavy skies overhead are low and pewter with threatening rain, Jongdae feels like the day couldn’t be brighter. 


	33. July 29th

Kyungsoo has a 12-hour night shift starting at 7 tonight, and he’d prefer to be spending the day before it relaxing, but instead he’s on the subway at 3 pm, surrounded by crowds of uniform-clad teenagers on their way from school to hagwon. His mom wants to meet him for coffee at some cafe her friends have told her about. Kyungsoo would usually have made up some excuse to avoid this, but he’s hoping meeting her for coffee now will mean he can worm out of a bigger event like going over for dinner another time. Meeting in a cafe, where she can’t go on at him too much because they’ll be in public and there’s a legitimate time restriction because of his shift tonight, is definitely the lesser of two evils.

He wishes it wasn’t like this. Once there’d been a time when he didn’t dread seeing his parents, when he didn’t have to constantly walk the tightrope of how much he can get away with without hurting his mother’s feelings or causing a confrontation. His mother doesn’t often lose her temper, but when put to the test she has a screech that could raise the dead. Kyungsoo doesn’t need to hear that directed at him. Conflict is one of the things he hates the most, and he avoids it as much as he can.

It’s getting harder, though. The stress he feels when he’s with his mother is creeping into the rest of his life. He used to be able to put it away, out of sight, out of mind, but now he’s started feeling the weight of their expectations at all times, and it’s just getting heavier and heavier.

His mom gave him the address, after offering to pick him up, which Kyungsoo refused. He can’t drive and he has no intentions of learning, but there’s no way he’s going to sit in a car with his mom again if he can possibly help it, not after the car journey from hell on his grandmother’s death anniversary. Public transport is another thing that’s the lesser of two evils. Kyungsoo gets off the subway and makes his way up the steps. As he does, he gets a message from his mother telling him that she’s arrived and waiting. Kyungsoo checks the time, but he’s not late, not yet. She’s just early.

The cafe is in Hongdae, home of several universities, trendy with its funky cafes, unique markets, buskers and nightlife. As he dodges clusters of students and follows the dot on his phone GPS through the maze of small, twisting streets, Kyungsoo wonders why his mother wants to go to a cafe in Hongdae, of all places. It doesn’t seem her kind of scene at all. She likes class, the more upmarket, the better.

Shrugging it off as just another unfathomable thing his mother does - it’ll be easier on his wallet, anyway - Kyungsoo navigates until he finds the building. A cosmetic shop and a clothing store sandwich a narrow stairwell leading to the businesses on the upper floors. He squints at the sign in the gloom of the stairwell, finds that Sajju Cafe is on the third floor, and starts to climb. The second floor holds a second-hand bookshop specializing in manhwa, and Kyungsoo’s eye is caught by the displays of some classics he hasn’t seen in a long time through the glass door and window. He stops longingly outside for a moment before forcing himself on. He doesn't have time now, but maybe if his mother doesn’t keep him too long, he can stop there on the way back down.

Sajju Cafe, when he reaches the third floor, seems to have been influenced by the design of a temple. It has clean, modern lines, but with golden elephant statues in recessed nooks and traditional painted paper on the walls. One wall is entirely covered with small square shelves, each one holding a little glass jar with a different kind of tea. There is a faint smell of incense in the room, and Kyungsoo’s nose starts to itch almost immediately. He groans inwardly as he looks around to find his mother. Who thought burning incense in a cafe was a good idea? He can already tell it’s a scent he’s allergic to. Now not only does he have to make polite conversation with his mother, he has to do it with watering eyes and a sniffly nose.

The room isn’t big, but he doesn’t catch sight of his mother until she stands up and waves at him. She’d been sitting in a booth across the other side of the room, just out of his line of sight. Kyungsoo gives an awkward wave back and crosses the cafe. It’s very quiet, only a couple of other people drinking tea from elegant ceramic tea sets. There are three booths and he notices that each of them has curtains, currently drawn to the side, but apparently able to be closed, hiding the occupants from view of the room. It seems like an odd idea for a cafe, but Kyungsoo kind of likes the idea of being able to hide. He’s always preferred privacy over busy spaces.

His mother gives him a hug, which Kyungsoo stands stiffly for until she lets go, and sits back down. Kyungsoo starts to sit opposite her, but his mother stops him by catching his wrist and pulling him towards her.

“Sit on this side with me,” she says. Kyungsoo stares at her. _Why?_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back. He knows it would come out sounding rude, even if he didn’t intend it. He sits down on the long booth seat next to her and immediately buries his face in his elbow to sneeze three times in quick succession. She’s not wearing her perfume this time, it’s just the incense is stronger on this side of the room. If she’d been wearing it he might have actually had a legitimate excuse to leave. Between the incense and her perfume he’d probably have started wheezing.

“You didn’t order?” he asks, glancing around for a menu. There’s nothing on the table, but neither is there a tea set.

“She’ll be here in just a moment,” his mother says. She sounds oddly nervous, and Kyungsoo goes cold.

“Mom,” he says, turning to her. There’s so much sudden dread in him that his voice comes out completely flat. “You didn’t - this isn’t a blind date, is it?” She couldn’t. Surely she didn’t. Not again.

“Oh, no,” his mother shakes her head. “Nothing like that. I can’t trust you after what you did to poor Taeah.”

Kyungsoo’s stomach clenches. She was the one who set him up on a date he didn’t want, and she _knew_ he wouldn’t want it, or she would have told him. He wants to tell her so, but there’s no point. Nothing he says or does gets through to her. She’ll never see him through anything but her own filters.

“Then what -” he starts, but is interrupted by the arrival of someone at the booth. His mother’s face brightens as she focuses on the newcomer, and Kyungsoo turns around to look too. He gets a colourful impression of bright, swirling fabrics as a woman about his mother’s age sits gracefully across the table. She’s wearing a traditional silk hanbok, hair pulled back into a bun, and once she’s seated she begins to lay out some squares of coloured cloth on the table between them. Kyungsoo takes one look at her and knows who she is. Or, what she is. This woman is a shaman.

Kyungsoo finds that he’s on his feet without any recollection of having stood up. His mother exclaims his name and takes his wrist again to try and pull him back down, but there’s a roaring in Kyungsoo’s ears, and he ignores the shocked tone in her voice that tells him just how badly behaved she thinks he’s being.

“No,” he says, cutting her off. He means to sound firm, but his voice shakes, betraying him. The shaman looks up at him and their eyes meet without Kyungsoo intending it. She looks very calm.

Kyungsoo drags his eyes away from her before she can try and read his soul or something and turns to face his mother. “I will not do this,” he says, and his voice is still shaking, and his ears are still roaring.

“Kyungsoo, darling, just sit down,” his mother wheedles. “I already paid for the session. Ms. Kim will be able to help you, see if there’s anything blocking you, I told her all about your problems with finding a partner and -”

“I said no,” Kyungsoo says, and his voice breaks painfully, jumping an octave like he’s a teenager again. At the break, his mother, incredibly, closes her mouth, the first hint of uncertainty coming into her face. But it’s too late for her to regret now. She’s gone too far this time.

Kyungsoo doesn’t even know what to call the emotions tearing through him right now, but whatever they are, they are strong. They’re so strong they’re shaking him, not just his voice but his hands too. “I cannot do this anymore,” he says, his language going formal in his distress. “Can you not see what you are doing to me?”

She stares at him, and Kyungsoo clenches and unclenches his fists and tries to breathe. “You are crushing me," he whispers.

“Darling...” she starts, and that’s real worry he sees in her eyes now, but Kyungsoo jerks away from her reaching hand. He bows stiffly to the shaman. His throat has locked up so tight that he knows if he tried to say the apology he wants to give her, nothing would come out. It doesn’t matter anyway. He will never be seeing this shaman again.

He turns and leaves the cafe without a backward glance. It’s the rudest thing he’s ever done to his mother. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes fiercely as he goes down the stairs towards street level. His eyes are watering. He tells himself it’s the incense.

He doesn’t put his glasses back on, walking almost blindly towards the subway station. The world feels safer as a blur right now.

He feels hopeless. After his conversation with Yifan as they’d battled zombies on their Minecraft server, he’d actually felt better about himself for a while. Yifan had shown him an online LGBTQ+ community where there were other people who felt exactly the same way he did, and Kyungsoo had finally understood that he wasn’t actually alone in this. He wasn’t the freak he’d always thought himself to be. Coming to this understanding has been like something that had been wrapped way too tight around his chest for his whole life is slowly but surely easing.

It’s such a _relief_ , and Kyungsoo had been starting to believe that maybe Yifan was right about his personal happiness being more important than what his parents want from him. But now his fragile new seedling of self-acceptance has been crushed right down into the earth again. What’s the point in learning about asexuality and aromanticism and giving himself a tidy little label (ace-aro, the people in the online community who sounded like him had called themselves) when his mother will just keep on looking for more and more outrageous ways to fix him? When she’ll just keep burying him alive in humiliation and guilt and despair?

It takes Kyungsoo nearly the entire train ride back to his house to calm down. He doesn’t often respond to things in such a physical way. As his emotions slowly ebb away, he closes his eyes and tries to forget about what just happened. Forget about everything. He’s escaped for now, and soon he’ll be at work. He doesn’t have to figure out what to do right now. He can just push it all away, like he always does.

He spends the next few hours lying on his couch with the lights off, playing Zen Koi on his phone. He needs to focus on something, but he doesn’t want to play one of the intense games he usually plays. Guiding a few koi through their evolutions to dragons is soothing. He evolves three koi before the shaky feeling all through him that had come from the shock and the distress of fighting with his mother in front of a stranger has calmed. He can put it away and think about it later. Maybe never.

He cooks himself dinner, and finds more calmness in the careful chopping of vegetables, stir-frying them with translucent glass noodles to create a japchae. Then he changes and heads back out into the solid wall of heat to go to the hospital. Night shifts for radiology aren’t usually too bad. The department closes for anything but emergencies at 10 pm, and often he can get quite a good night’s sleep in the small radiology call room, depending, of course, on whether there are any emergencies overnight.

The first part of the evening goes without anything significant happening. At 10 Kyungsoo nods to the tech when she tells him she’s shut down the MRI computer. There’s nothing urgent that can’t wait till morning at the moment, so Kyungsoo heads to the call room and lies on the bed to evolve a few more koi.

He’s woken from a sleep he hadn't intended to fall into by the ringing of his phone from where it had fallen out of his hand onto his chest. He rubs his hand across his face as he sits up, glances at the time - just after 1 am - and answers the call. Min Jiyong in the ED has a pregnant patient with acute abdominal pain, and that's all Kyungsoo needs to know before he's standing up and shrugging his arms into his white coat which he’d left draped over the chair. There are some things that are always seen immediately, and this is one of them.

He heads down to the ED, nods politely to the nurse at the triage station, and is directed to a consultation room, where he finds someone has already brought the portable ultrasound trolley in. The patient is lying on the examination bed, a young man of a similar age who is probably her partner sitting on the chair against the wall. Dr. Min is still there, and so is Jongdae, evidently the consultant ob-gyn tonight. The sight of his friend takes Kyungsoo straight back to seeing him stand up from the table in that meeting room and just collapse without warning. Kyungsoo had hid it well, but it scared the living daylights out of him. It's been over a month now, and Kyungsoo is glad to see that Jongdae looks a lot better than the last time Kyungsoo saw him. If he's honest, it would have been hard for Jongdae to look worse.

Jongdae may have colour in his cheeks again, but he still seems tense as he examines the patient. She's 25 years old and at 9 weeks gestation, information Dr. Min gave him over the phone, and is moaning faintly in pain as Jongdae does a physical exam on her abdomen. Kyungsoo knows pregnancy complicates a lot of things, including his own options for imaging - anything involving radiation puts the foetus at risk - and it complicates clinical diagnosis too, as the baby displaces the normal position of internal organs as it grows, and it's hard to know whether symptoms like nausea and vomiting are due to the pregnancy itself or an underlying condition. No wonder Jongdae looks tense.

Jongdae steps back and the nurse prepares the patient's stomach for ultrasound with clear aquasonic gel while Kyungsoo gets the machine ready. Jongdae smiles at Kyungsoo despite his visible stress.

"Hey, you're here," he says quietly. "Did we wake you?"

"Yeah, but it's fine, I actually fell asleep by accident," Kyungsoo admits. "How about you? This isn't one of your insane three-day shifts, is it?"

Jongdae smiles more easily this time and shakes his head. "No, things have been much better lately," he says, and then the image comes up on the monitor and their conversation is immediately forgotten as they both focus on the screen.

"Any thoughts?" Kyungsoo asks as he orients the probe.

"There's no bleeding or uterine contractions," Jongdae murmurs as they watch the grey tones of the image shift beneath Kyungsoo's probe. "I found involuntary guarding and rebound tenderness on physical exam and the history is vomiting for several days with a severe increase of abdominal pain a couple of hours ago. I don't think it's obstetric. I'm leaning towards gallstones or appendicitis." He turns to Dr. Min and asks him to call the general surgery resident.

Kyungsoo carefully locates the liver on the ultrasound, watching the monitor intently. He's looking for the masses that will indicate a gallstone. Jongdae's thinking makes sense to him. Being pregnant doesn't mean you can't also get gallstones or appendicitis, it just makes it way more difficult to diagnose them. The nurse soothes the patient who can't be given pain relief until they know what it is, keeping her still while he works.

He finds no liver or gallbladder masses and no dilated bile ducts. "No gallstone," he tells Jongdae, who sighs a little as he nods. Kyungsoo knows he would have preferred a gallstone, which could probably have been treated with pain relief and diet changes, because now the diagnosis is likely to be appendicitis, and abdominal surgery gets a lot more tricky when a patient is pregnant.

The on-call general surgery resident arrives, and Jongdae turns away from the monitor to talk to her while Kyungsoo looks for signs that might suggest appendicitis. He listens as Jongdae gives her his suspected diagnosis.

"Are you confident with appendectomies?" he asks.

The resident hesitates. "Yes," she says, "but not in pregnancy. I've never done one on a pregnant patient. I wouldn't want to try it without a CT or MRI."

Well, she won't be getting either of those, Kyungsoo thinks to himself as he narrows his eyes at the monitor. A CT abdomen is too much radiation for the baby unless it's the most life-threatening emergency, and an MRI for appendicitis is complete overkill. Besides, it’s 1 in the morning. The MRI unit is closed until 7 am.

"I have intra-peritoneal free fluid," he announces. Jongdae and the general surgery resident turn to look at him.

"Appendicitis, then," Jongdae says. The resident grimaces.

"Can we wait a few hours until radiology is open?" she asks. "I'm really not confident doing it without an MRI."

Jongdae does not look happy about this idea at all. "No, I don't think we can," he says. "The history of suddenly increased pain a few hours ago suggests the appendix might have already ruptured. We can't risk waiting until morning."

"I'll have to call my attending," the resident says unhappily.

Jongdae nods at her. "Then do it."

The attending general surgeon, when she arrives 15 minutes later, agrees with Jongdae’s diagnosis and takes the patient to surgery for an appendectomy. The patient is wheeled out, and Kyungsoo knows that’s probably the last he will see of her. He glances at the wall clock, then at Jongdae, catching him in the middle of rubbing his eyes with both fists.

"You okay?" he asks, rather more anxious than he'd ever admit, even to himself. He never wants to see his friend collapse like that again. Ever.

"I'm fine," Jongdae says, turning to smile at him. "Just normal 1 am tiredness."

"Are you sleeping here tonight?" Kyungsoo asks.

"Yeah," Jongdae says, "but there was a flood in the ob-gyn call room today, something burst under the sink or something. The whole place is soaked. I'll probably sleep on the couch in my office, it's going to be better than the resident dorm on the top floor."

Kyungsoo frowns. "No, don't sleep on your couch, that's not restful," he says. "You can come sleep in the radiology call room."

"That would be amazing," Jongdae says, looking relieved. "But what about you? Aren't you going to sleep?"

"Nah, I'm fine, I already slept this evening anyway. You need it more," Kyungsoo says, and takes Jongdae's wrist to lead him out. Jongdae laughs, sounding a little embarrassed as they head to the elevator.

"You're as bad as Chanyeol and Baekhyun," he says. "Everyone's been treating me like I'm made of glass."

"Can't blame them," Kyungsoo mumbles. "You scared the shit out of Baekhyun, you know." And me, he thinks, but doesn't say it aloud.

"I know," Jongdae says, very quietly. "I didn't mean to."

"Nobody thinks you meant to," Kyungsoo says. "All the same, you can't blame us for wanting to make sure you're okay."

"I don't," Jongdae says, smiling at him. "Not really. I mean, it's a bit embarrassing, but it's nice to know people care."

Kyungsoo leaves it at that as the elevator takes them up. Jongdae does look better. Like he'd said, he just looks the normal tired anyone would be at half past 1 in the morning on a night shift.

In the small radiology call room Jongdae sprawls face-down on the bed with a muffled groan. Kyungsoo holds back his smile as the ob-gyn wriggles all his limbs, then rolls over to look up at him with slightly dishevelled hair. "Come talk to me," Jongdae says, sitting up and leaning back against the wall as he shoves his scrub-clad legs under the quilt. He pats the blanket beside him.

Kyungsoo goes to sit beside him, and is completely startled when Jongdae leans sidewards and rests his head on Kyungsoo's shoulder, wriggling a little as he makes himself comfortable. Kyungsoo is not one for physical contact, and he tenses momentarily, but then finds himself relaxing as the warmth of Jongdae's body goes into him. It's actually not that bad. Almost comforting. Jongdae is apparently the physically affectionate type, perhaps more so when he's tired.

"We haven't talked for ages," Jongdae says, sounding sleepy. "How are you? You told me your mom was pressuring you about marriage a while back. Has that gotten any better?"

Kyungsoo sighs. "No," he admits. "Worse, actually. Do you know what she did today? She pretended she wanted to meet me for coffee this afternoon, and secretly invited a shaman to come and...I don't know, scare off whatever evil spirits she thinks are stopping me from getting married." He bites his teeth together to stop himself talking. He hadn't meant to say all that. Jongdae asking him was like opening a floodgate.

"Oh no," Jongdae says sympathetically. His head is still on Kyungsoo's shoulder. "If you don't want to get married, you don't have to, whatever your mom thinks."

"The problem is, it's not just not wanting to get married right now. It's never. I'm asexual," Kyungsoo blurts out, and freezes. He's never said it aloud, never admitted it so plainly like that, not even to Yifan. Barely even to himself. What is it about Jongdae that makes him so easy to talk to?

"Ah," Jongdae says softly. His arms slip around Kyungsoo's waist, hugging him. "She doesn't know?"

Kyungsoo snorts. "No, she doesn't. I only figured it out recently myself. I’d never even heard of it a year ago, but it makes complete sense to me. I don't want romantic relationships either so apparently that makes me something called ace-aro. But I'm the only child in my family, and my mother is desperate for grandchildren, and my father's line is going to end with me. Even if they believe asexuality is real, I don’t know if they’d accept me being it. They’d probably just try even crazier things to try and fix me."

He feels Jongdae's bony ribs move against him as he sighs. "I guess you feel a lot of pressure, huh?"

"Too much. It’s too much and I just don’t know what to do anymore," Kyungsoo says. Jongdae hums gently. It's such an understanding sound that Kyungsoo feels comfort from it even though Jongdae hasn't said anything. Now that he thinks of it, he supposes if anyone understands being under too much pressure, it's Jongdae.

There's silence for a while, but it's comfortable, and Kyungsoo finds himself relaxing more than he has in weeks. After a while he starts to wonder if Jongdae has fallen asleep, but then Jongdae speaks again.

"You know, I got offered a promotion the other week. Department chief."

"Wow," Kyungsoo says. "That's great, Jongdae."

"That's what everybody says," Jongdae says. "But I'm going to turn it down."

"Why?"

“I don’t want it,” Jongdae says softly. "But there's so much pressure. Everyone expects me to be happy about it. My colleagues have been urging me to take it. They want me as their department chief, because they like me and they know I'd never treat them like Dr. Heo did. It makes me feel so guilty. I feel like I should take it, like it's selfish not to when everyone wants me to so much. But if I did..." he trails off, his voice getting so quiet Kyungsoo can barely hear him. "I just get too stressed, Kyungsoo. That's what happened to me last time. I’m struggling with too many other things already and I know I won’t be able to cope. Baekhyun says I have to take care of myself first, and I know he’s right. But it's so hard not to feel guilty, and I’m going to disappoint everyone, and it just feels horrible."

Kyungsoo understands painfully well what Jongdae means. It's a different situation with him and his parents, but the feelings, the pressure to conform to what the normal expectation is, the stress of it all, the knowledge of disappointment hanging over him, is the same. It's hard to see it clearly when it's himself, but in Jongdae he can see it. It makes his heart burn to hear Jongdae sound so lost.

"You have to do what's right for you," he says. "You are your own person and people's respect for you shouldn’t rely on you doing what they want. If it does, then they have issues, not you. You're awesome no matter what and anybody who doesn't think so isn't worth shit." He sounds oddly fierce. "Your colleagues probably think they’re being supportive. I bet they don't realise that what they're doing is pressuring you so much. You should ask them to stop."

"You're right," Jongdae whispers tiredly. "How can they know how I feel when I don't tell them?"

Kyungsoo goes quiet. Jongdae's words, breathed out on the brink of sleep, seem to hit him like a brick to the face. He sits still against the wall, staring out into the dim room while Jongdae's breathing evens out against his side.

He's expecting his parents to know how he feels when he's never even tried to explain it to them. He's been too afraid of what will happen, afraid of hurting his mother especially, but in doing so, he's been letting her continue to unintentionally hurt him, until it's gotten so far that he dreads seeing his own parents.

He can't let this go on. The rift between them is partly Kyungsoo's fault. He's been expecting too much of them. He wants them to read his mind, to understand him without him having to explain, so that he can avoid the disappointment and possibly anger and unacceptance he’s going to have to deal with. He needs to stand up to them, just like Jongdae is going to stand up and face the disappointment of the chief of staff and his colleagues when he declines the promotion.

But Kyungsoo truly doesn't believe that anyone will be disappointed in Jongdae. Surely anyone with a heart would understand. Surely anyone who cares about Jongdae as a person would prefer he was happy as a regular doctor, rather than being forced into a position where he’ll be stressed and miserable and perhaps even endanger his health again. Perhaps they'll be disappointed on their own account that they won't have such a great person as their chief, but in Kyungsoo’s opinion, anyone who blames Jongdae for that isn’t worth giving the time of day to.

What if Kyungsoo's parents are like that too? What if it’s possible that if Kyungsoo can make them understand how unhappy they’re making him, they would stop? What if they're not disappointed in Kyungsoo, himself, but simply what they'll have lost for themselves? And that's not something for Kyungsoo to fix. That's their problem to solve.

By the time Kyungsoo has hashed all this out in his mind, Jongdae is sound asleep. Kyungsoo slowly and carefully unwraps Jongdae's arms from around him and lies him down, holding his head to stop it falling back and waking him. It reminds him of taking care of a child, and for the first time, Kyungsoo finds himself perhaps understanding why his mother wants grandchildren to look after and love. There's something very heartfelt, very precious about looking after a person you care for. But it's not Kyungsoo's problem to solve.

He gets Jongdae safely lying down without waking him. Kyungsoo was intending to carefully climb out of the bed over him and spend the small hours of the morning in his office, but he’s tired, and he feels more comfortable in the presence of another person than he can ever remember feeling. He doesn't want to give it up to go to his cold, lonely office. He wants to stay here, in this tiny, quiet, dimly lit call room, with a friend who understands him and doesn't expect anything from him.

The bed isn't all that big, but then, neither are Jongdae or Kyungsoo. He lies down beside Jongdae and closes his eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, worries don't race like express trains through his mind the second he does so. He curls onto his side and falls asleep.

\---

It’s noon and lunch hour has just started. Chanyeol has been in his office most of the morning to prepare a case study he’s presenting at the upcoming GP education session _._ It’s an interesting case of a fourteen-year-old with foetal alcohol syndrome, which only got caught in middle school when her teachers thought her learning disability was too great to be explained without a medical issue. He’s presenting it with a psychiatrist who’ll discuss the cognitive and behavioural challenges a teenager like this will face and how important it is to notice signs of alcoholism in expecting mothers.

Chanyeol closes the case file and gets up. He needs to find someone he can have lunch with. Chanyeol doesn’t like eating alone and he needs someone to talk to that isn’t all about cases and sick children. Casual conversation really. He briefly considers calling Yeonseok, but he’s at work too. He’ll have to find someone else he can drag to lunch. Preferably outside in the rooftop garden.

He messages his friends and makes his way up and down the hospital to talk to their department secretaries with no luck. Baekhyun is still in surgery after a burn victim earlier flipped the schedule upside down. Jongdae is dealing with a patient in labour. Minseok is busy with a traffic accident that rolled through the ED doors fifteen minutes earlier. Kyungsoo is busy being Kyungsoo. Chanyeol sighs as he stands in the middle of the ground floor with the kimbap he bought at the cafeteria in his hand, looking at the elevator that will take him to the fifteenth floor and the rooftop garden. So much for having friends at the same hospital.

“Hey, Chanyeol!” Chanyeol turns around and sees Sehun, smiling as he walks towards him with a heavy-looking folder in his arms, eyes disappearing into crescents.

“What’re you doing down here?” Sehun asks.

Chanyeol sighs. “I was looking for someone to eat with, but all my friends are too busy for me,” he says pitifully. Sehun laughs, draping an arm around his shoulders.

“Poor Chanyeol. You can eat with me,” he says and gently pushes Chanyeol towards the elevators. The air conditioning inside the elevator is blasting ice cold, sending a chill down Chanyeol’s spine.

“Rooftop garden okay with you?” he asks and Sehun nods. His long slim finger presses ten and the elevator starts its ascent.

“I want to leave this in my office before I put it down somewhere random and lose it,” he explains, nodding down at his folder.

When they get to the tenth floor, Sehun strides confidently down the polished floors. Chanyeol follows like a lost puppy, not knowing his way around this department at all. Dermatology looks pristine and feels sterile compared to the colourful floor he spends most of his days on. Chanyeol isn’t really used to the white walls. Sehun’s office is as clean as the rest of the department, but seems strangely empty. There’s a small box in the middle of the desk and a few papers spread around it, probably from today’s patients.

Sehun drops his folder on his desk and turns back to Chanyeol. Chanyeol just stares around the empty space.

“Are all offices in dermatology this empty?” he asks when Sehun gently shoos him out of the room and closes the door behind them. Sehun blinks.

“No, I... “ he says, and stalls. They’ve reached the elevators by now, but Sehun doesn’t elaborate. Chanyeol frowns. He has had enough bad experiences with his friends this spring to last him a lifetime and he’s not going to ignore this. Sehun has had his troubles too with Mikyung being so far away.

“What is it?” Chanyeol nudges Sehun’s shoulder and the other man takes a step away.

“I’ll tell you on the rooftop,” he says and steps into the elevator, Chanyeol hot on his heels.

The potted trees provide little shade, so they end up pressed up against the wall. The building behind them gives them more shade and the breeze around them is fresh in the summer heat. Chanyeol closes his eyes for a blissful moment before he opens them again to start eating his kimbap. Sehun isn’t eating, he realises after a few moments.

“Don’t you have food?” he asks.

Sehun blinks. “Oh, right. Lunch. I forgot again,” he says, and laughs a little. “I’ll get coffee on the way back down.”

Chanyeol frowns. Sehun is too skinny to be skipping meals, but he probably doesn’t want to be nagged at. Unease nips at him again. Baekhyun had done this too, before…

“So - your office,” Chanyeol prompts. Sehun leans back against the wall and stares up at the blue sky. Chanyeol tilts his head to look at him.

“I’m leaving,” Sehun says. Chanyeol inhales a few pieces of rice.

“What?” he coughs, voice hoarse and throaty. Sehun just looks at him, face unreadable.

“I handed in my resignation a few days ago,” he clarifies, and punches Chanyeol’s back to help him swallow what’s gotten down the wrong pipe. “I got a job with Jeong Yongjun at his private practice in Busan.”

“You mean you’re moving? To Busan?” Chanyeol asks. It still doesn’t really feel like he’s actually heard what he’s been told. The puzzle pieces in his mind haven’t quite found their right spot to make sense of this. If Sehun’s moving to Busan, will they never see each other again? Granted, Sehun isn’t his best friend ever, but he’s still a good friend. Chanyeol doesn’t want to lose him.

Sehun nods. “Yeah. I’m going to live with Mikyung again.” His eyes disappear into happy crescents when he says her name. Chanyeol grins back, relieved to see how happy Sehun looks.

“That’s awesome,” he says, and means it. He’ll miss having Sehun around, but it’s worth it to see him without that ever-present sense of loneliness looming threateningly over him.

The conversation strays from Sehun’s move to Busan, but the thought of it lingers in Chanyeol’s mind. Sehun moving into private practice isn’t that big of a deal. He’s a dermatologist, he can do it without huge adjustments. Moving to Busan, though, that’s far away.

“It’s not,” Sehun laughs. Chanyeol blinks, unaware that he’d said it aloud. Sehun pushes at his shoulder, still grinning. “Busan isn’t that far away.”

Chanyeol snorts. “I’d love to have seen someone trying to tell you that a year ago,” he says, and Sehun gives him a look of utter betrayal. Chanyeol bursts into laughter. He understands, though. Chanyeol is sure he wouldn’t have been able to be away from Yeonseok for a full year like Sehun has been away from Mikyung. It's painful to even imagine it. If Yeonseok had been stationed in Busan for an entire year, Chanyeol would immediately have moved with him. Chanyeol would follow his boyfriend anywhere. He sends Sehun a smile and pats his shoulder.

“We’re going to miss you here,” he says. Sehun rolls his eyes.

“Don’t pretend that I won’t be overrun with you fools throughout the year whenever you’re on vacation.” Chanyeol just responds by fluffing up the dermatologist’s hair, to many complaints.

Lunch finishes sooner than he would have wished and soon they’re back in the freezing air conditioning. Sehun leaves him with a small wave when he exits on the white tenth floor and Chanyeol takes a deep breath as the elevator descends towards the colourful sixth floor. As he steps out, he’s greeted by rainbows, unicorns and dragons on the walls and smiling nurses in their bright patterned scrubs walking in and out of rooms.

Chanyeol takes over the afternoon rounds for Dr. Choi. Every little patient in their ward is slowly getting better. There are no emergencies, no bad news, no sadness in the halls of the paediatric ward. He leaves the hospital around three in the afternoon. The sun is beating down from a clear blue sky and the temperature has risen since lunch, but Chanyeol doesn’t mind. He’s in good spirits as he drives home, sunglasses on his nose blocking out the glare of the summer rays.

Yeonseok peeks his head around the corner to look at Chanyeol when he opens the door to the apartment. Chanyeol smiles at him brightly.

“Ready?” he asks and walks over to kiss him hello. Yeonseok laughs and nods. That’s when Chanyeol realises he’s wearing his uniform. It even looks like it’s been ironed. His forehead furrows in confusion. It’s no secret that Chanyeol finds his boyfriend incredibly attractive in his uniform, but this is not for Chanyeol’s eyes only and they have somewhere to be.

"I thought I’d surprise Seojoon,” Yeonseok explains and reaches up to tip his cap a little forward. Yoora had told them her son is obsessed with the police at the moment so they could buy appropriate gifts, and Chanyeol smiles to think of his nephew opening the door to a real police officer.

“You’re the best,” he says, and Yeonseok just smiles like the all-knowing man he is. He pulls Chanyeol with him back to the front door and then turns around to face the empty hallway.

“We’re leaving, Baekhyun!” Yeonseok calls into the apartment. Baekhyun shouts something back at them but the words die out in the middle of his sentence. He’s on the computer playing some online game with Lu Han, and his focus quickly turns back to the game. Chanyeol and Yeonseok share a grin before they close the door behind them and walk towards the elevators.

Living with Baekhyun is natural now. They have movie nights once a week when their schedules allow it, Baekhyun has no problem teasing them when Chanyeol steals one kiss too many and Yeonseok treats Baekhyun like a second younger brother. It’s peaceful in the apartment, even with a person extra. Just like it’s supposed to be.

Yeonseok cranks up the aircon in the car and Chanyeol shivers before his body adjusts to the new temperature as they drive towards Yoora’s home. She’d called him a week ago and invited him and Yeonseok over to celebrate Seojoon’s third birthday. Before Chanyeol had a chance to start worrying, she’d told him that if they came at around four in the afternoon, they would have three hours before their parents were invited for dinner at seven, and could leave before they arrived. She’d planned it all out carefully. Four would be in the middle of Seojoon’s kindergarten friends being there, it would be childish and informal and fun, and most importantly, avoiding any potential conflict with their parents.

Chanyeol still hasn’t talked to his parents after the disastrous dinner. He feels sick whenever he thinks about that night. He should have known better. He should never have told them.

Yeonseok glances over from where he’s driving. “Baby,” he says gently. Chanyeol looks at him, only to realise his eyes are wet. Damn, he can’t even think of it without crying.

“I’m okay,” Chanyeol says, but Yeonseok knows better. Chanyeol doesn’t want to lie, but he doesn’t have the time to cry now. He has to think of something else. He’s supposed to be happy for Seojoon’s birthday.

“Did I tell you I handed in my application to become a K9 officer?” Yeonseok asks suddenly and the words have Chanyeol turning towards him. It’s enough to force the sad thoughts from his mind briefly, enough for him to dry his eyes and focus on something else.

“You did not,” he answers, and Yeonseok grins at him before he turns back to the road. “When did you finish the application?”

“Two days ago. I handed it in yesterday. Lieutenant Choi thinks I have a fair shot of getting it.”

“Does that mean we’ll get a puppy?” Chanyeol can’t hide the wonder and excitement in his voice. He has adored pets ever since he was a child. He took home strays he found on the streets and made pets of the critters that would accidentally enter the home. Yeonseok laughs and nods.

“If I’m chosen, yes, we’ll get a puppy.”

The rest of the car ride is spent discussing dog breeds. Chanyeol would love a small dog, a dachshund or a beagle, but Yeonseok says it’ll probably be a Labrador retriever or a German shepherd, as they’re the most suited to police work. Chanyeol pouts like a petulant child. He would like to see a beagle sniff out drugs and become the big hero, just for once.

They arrive at Yoora’s house, park on the street and walk up to the front door. Chanyeol eyes his boyfriend in his sexy uniform and is about to propose they put on a play for his nephew, one in which Yeonseok has caught Chanyeol and cuffed him, but just as he opens his mouth, Yeonseok gives him a knowing look and presses the doorbell.

“Leave those fantasies in the bedroom,” he smirks. Chanyeol flushes bright scarlet just as the door is flung open.

“Uncle!” Seojoon shouts and flings himself at Chanyeol’s legs. He grabs the boy and lifts him high into the air.

“You’ve grown so big!” he exclaims and Seojoon squeals in pure joy. When Chanyeol puts him down again, Seojoon suddenly notices Yeonseok in his uniform and gasps loudly.

“Mommy!” he shouts into the house as he sprints away. “There’s a police officer here!” When Yoora comes into the hallway to greet them, Seojoon is hiding behind her legs, staring at Yeonseok with huge eyes.

“Look who’s here,” she says and opens her arms to embrace Chanyeol. She holds onto him for a little longer than usual and Chanyeol allows himself to be comforted. Her hug is another confirmation that he’s her brother and always will be. Seojoon doesn’t stop staring at Yeonseok. When Yoora lets go of Chanyeol, she turns to Yeonseok with a big smile.

“Nice to meet you, officer!” she says and there’s a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Did uncle Chanyeol give you any trouble?” She grabs Seojoon from behind her legs and lifts him up so he can sit on her hip. He’s still staring. “Uncle Chanyeol must have been naughty, don’t you think, Seojoon?”

Seojoon nods, completely entranced by Yeonseok’s uniform. The offended huff from Chanyeol has both Yoora and Yeonseok laughing. Yeonseok starts to talk to Seojoon, making the little boy’s face light up as his shyness recedes, and Chanyeol walks ahead of them into the house.

The living room is full of small children around Seojoon’s age. They’re playing with a train set laid out on the floor, with a few parents sitting on the sofas around them and chatting. His brother-in-law, Minki, comes to greet him and he, too, gives Chanyeol a strong hug. It solidifies the statement Yoora’s hug made, their acceptance of Chanyeol as part of their family. If he thinks too much about it, it’ll start making him tear up again.

The kids all suddenly scramble from the floor in a hurry as they’re drawn towards Yeonseok and his police uniform. Everybody wants to see the police officer in person, wants to touch the badge on his uniform and wear his cap. Seojoon gets to try first and the childish joy in his eyes as he runs to his father to show him just how cool he is with a real police hero’s cap is worth everything.

Chanyeol and Yeonseok’s gift to Seojoon is a police uniform costume and a motorized ride-on police car, which they’ve already unpacked from its box and charged up so that it’s ready to go. It comes with a remote control that will allow Yoora and Minki to control the car to make sure Seojoon doesn’t get into trouble with oncoming pedestrians in the park. Seojoon gives a joyous shout, and the other children flock to the car to take turns sitting in it next to the birthday boy.

“You spoil him,” Yoora tells him, though she’s smiling at Seojoon’s excitement.

“I’m allowed to, he’s my only nephew. Unless...” he lets his eyes drag down to her flat stomach and back up again with a smirk on his lips, but is only rewarded by her hand smacking the back of his head.

As the afternoon goes on, the children are picked up and taken home one by one until there’s only Seojoon left, playing with a roaring dinosaur he got from one of his kindergarten friends. He’s playing alone but is so absorbed that he doesn’t seem to notice. Minki pours cold drinks and they all sit at the dining table to talk.

They discuss everything, the news and the weather and their jobs, until suddenly the doorbell sounds. It’s enough to bring Seojoon out of his imaginary dinosaur world and he rushes into the hallway to open the door. Yoora gets up from the table to follow her son.

“Granma! Granpa!” Seojoon shrieks delightedly from the hallway, and Chanyeol goes still, hand around his glass of grape juice curling tighter as pure dread sinks cold into his stomach and starts to spread.

“You’re early,” Yoora says from the hallway, and more words are said, in the familiar tones of his father and his mother, only Chanyeol can’t take in their meaning. His eyes dart futilely around the kitchen, which is in the back corner of the house and there is no escape from without passing them on the way. His heartbeat stutters in his chest.

“Chanyeol,” says Yeonseok next to him. He reaches for Chanyeol’s hand, and Chanyeol jerks away so violently that he sends the glass flying, grape juice spilling all across the table. Minki swears and jumps up to grab a cloth.

“No,” Chanyeol croaks, barely able to hear over the ringing in his ears, but he can still see the alarm in Yeonseok’s face. “Don’t, don’t let her see, pretend...pretend…” he wants to say _pretend you’re Minki’s friend,_ but he’s lost his words, his chest seizing too tight to get them out.

“Fuck, Chanyeol, just - don’t panic, okay? Listen -” Yeonseok says, hands twitching with the need to hold Chanyeol. Then he breaks off, because Chanyeol’s mother has appeared in the doorway to the lounge. Her eyes go to the kitchen table. To Chanyeol.

Chanyeol can’t breathe. His ribs have locked so tight he cannot take a single breath. He stares at his mother, unable to tear his eyes away as the shock registers, and is chased swiftly away by a hardness that in all Chanyeol’s life he cannot ever remember seeing on her face.

“Oh,” she says. That’s all. Then she ignores him. She turns and goes to the sofa in the lounge, Seojoon tugging excitedly at her skirt for the wrapped presents she carries. Minki is wiping the spilled grape juice from the table. Some of it has dripped onto Chanyeol’s jeans, dark damp splotches on the summer stonewashed denim, like drops of blood.

“Please, Chanyeol, you have to breathe,” Yeonseok whispers. He sounds upset. He never sounds upset. After a lifetime of hiding, Chanyeol had finally allowed his boyfriend to be visible, to be seen, part of Chanyeol’s life and not something to be ashamed of, and now he’s forcing him back into the shadows, and Chanyeol himself is being forced there right along with him. There’s a ringing in his ears, mixing weirdly with the sounds of Seojoon excitedly opening the presents from his grandparents. Chanyeol wraps his arms around his ribs. His hands go around his biceps and his nails dig in, and he’s locked in, fear choking him blue as his mother’s face across the room is wreathed in smiles and love, watching her grandson open his birthday gifts.

“Chanyeol, I’m here,” Yeonseok whispers, so distant through the ringing, ringing in his ears. “Breathe, baby. Come on, you can do it. Please, sweetheart, breathe for me.”

Yeonseok is here, and that’s part of the problem. Chanyeol has to hunch in on himself to stop the way it’s wracking his ribs, and his hair falls into his face. He tries to dredge up the mask he wears over his emotions. He’s had a lifetime of practice hiding his feelings away, but now he can’t find it again, he’s forgotten how to hide, everything all laid out raw and bloody for everyone to see, and Minki’s hand is on the base of his neck, face worried as he looks between Chanyeol and Yeonseok, and Chanyeol needs to breathe.

His mother pulls Seojoon onto her lap and kisses his head. The world is going grey around the edges. Chanyeol helplessly digs his hands into his biceps, and he wonders, if Seojoon were to turn out like Chanyeol, if all that love and affection would just drain away, vanish like it had never existed, just like it had for Chanyeol.

The breath he takes is more of a sob, a tight choked sound that barely gets any air into his lungs, not enough to stave off the greying of his vision. He sees his mother stiffen at the sound without looking over. His father, sitting opposite her, looks. Chanyeol lowers his head even more, hair falling further forward as he grips his arms so tight he'll have bruises tomorrow.

The problem is, Chanyeol thinks as his choked, desperate gasps for air fill the kitchen and Minki’s hand is so hot on Chanyeol’s neck and Yeonseok’s hands go into fists and out again, clenching and relaxing as he watches Chanyeol try to hold himself together with his own arms and be unable to help at all, _the problem is_ that Chanyeol is still afraid, and it’s so stupid. He’s so stupid. He’s been living with his fear for twenty long years, and it’s stupid because it shouldn’t matter anymore, now that the worst has happened. It should be the end of the fear, because surely there’s nothing worse that could go wrong now, but the fear is hands of iron gripping him around the ribs, squeezing the breath from him anyway, refusing to listen. Fear has always been like that.

And it’s stupid, it’s so stupid, because Chanyeol knows that he’d be able to deal with all the fear and pain and hatred choking him out if only he would allow Yeonseok to link his fingers with his and hug him and talk him down without being terrified of how his mother would react if she knew that the police officer sitting in Yoora’s kitchen is Chanyeol’s boyfriend. But Chanyeol won’t do it. He won’t have Yeonseok exposed to the same hatred that his mother turned on Chanyeol.

“...okay, you’re okay,” Minki is saying to him. “Breathe as I count. One...two…”

Chanyeol knows Yeonseok is telling him what to do, because Chanyeol won’t let him help. He wants to calm down, he wants to follow the numbers, but Minki is not Yeonseok, and the next breath comes as a gasp so loud that the conversation in the lounge goes quiet again. Chanyeol closes his eyes. He must be so obvious. He must look such a sight, a grown man trying to hold himself together while he visibly shakes to pieces, needing to be calmed and unable to do it.

“Mommy, Uncle Chanyeol…” Seojoon begins, childish voice raised high in distress. Yoora hushes him, and Chanyeol hears her pick him up and her footsteps recede as she takes him out. The door closes behind her, and Chanyeol has lost his way to his breathing again, his chest is being gripped so tight, and there is silence.

“Isn’t he leaving?” his mother asks into the silence. “I don’t want to stay in the same room as him for more than five minutes.”

Chanyeol’s eyes open. “Okay,” he says. His voice cracks, and he’s aware of how ugly it sounds, clawing his way out of his achingly tight chest. He uncurls, dropping his arms from around himself. His hands are shaking, but the words have released him somewhat, given him a goal, _leave,_ and he must stand himself up and get out of this room. It’s not just his hands that are shaking as he stands, and Minki stands too and takes his arm. Yeonseok is still seated, pale underneath his tan, eyes ragged as he looks at Chanyeol.

“Chanyeol, don’t -” starts Minki.

“Let me go,” Chanyeol says sharply. “I - I need to leave. I’m leaving, alright?”

“No.” His father’s voice. Everything goes still again. His father turns to his mother. “If you can’t be in the same room as our son, then you are the one who should leave.”

Everyone stares. Chanyeol trembles.

“Excuse me?” asks his mother, dripping ice.

“You heard me,” says his father. “It doesn’t matter who Chanyeol is dating so long as he’s happy. I will not throw him away for being honest with us.”

His mother stands, and so does his father, and then it starts. The shouting, the screaming, the Park family temper that seems to show itself in every family member but Chanyeol, whose temper turned to the inside after the age of thirteen, when he became too afraid to show emotions, any of them, for fear of being found out. And so his temper morphed into the cold choking hands that claw at him from the inside, curling around his ribs and cracking his bones. If Yoora weren’t keeping Seojoon out of this mess doubtless she’d be screaming too.

And it’s all because of Chanyeol, this anger, his parents disagreeing, shouting at each other, the words so loud and tangled Chanyeol can make no sense of them. It’s all because of him.

An arm goes round him. Yeonseok. Chanyeol wants to pull away, but it’s too late. “We’re leaving,” Yeonseok says to Minki through the shouting. “I will not expose him to this any longer.” Minki nods, face pained, and Yeonseok leads Chanyeol past his shouting parents and towards the door.

“Is that him?” screeches his mother as they pass. “Is that the bastard who turned him -”

“Nobody turned him!” yells his father. “Yoora said she’s known since he was sixteen, he’s been the same good kid all his life and that’s not changed, and if you’d bother to try looking past your prejudices you’d know it -”

They’re out in the hallway, Yeonseok closing the door on the fighting. It’s still loud enough to make out every word. Somewhere amidst his clawing panic Chanyeol takes in the fact that his father is standing up for him, but the conflict is so intense that it almost makes it worse, not better. Not only has he lost his mother, he’s caused a divide between his parents. Better if they agreed and he lost them both than Chanyeol tearing his whole family apart.

They put on their shoes and Yeonseok opens the door. The hot outside air hits them, so humid it almost feels solid. Strangely, the heat makes goosebumps rise up all over Chanyeol’s bare arms, and he suddenly feels extremely sick. Yeonseok pulls him to the car but Chanyeol shakes his head tightly when he opens the door. He can’t get in the car right now. He needs to walk and calm himself and breathe, and he’s going to be sick.

He turns from the car and begins to walk blindly down the street. He hears the beep and clunk as Yeonseok relocks it and hurries to follow. He doesn’t say anything, which is good, because if he says anything Chanyeol is going to either cry or throw up, and he doesn’t want to do either of those things on a public street. There’s a park at the end of the block, more a sports field really, a wide expanse of grass stretching out and shimmering into summer heat haze, a baseball cage at one side, empty white soccer goalposts demarking soccer pitches.

Chanyeol pulls Yeonseok onto the edge of the unused pitches, and once they’re on the grass he sits down. He lies down flat on his back and closes his eyes. He stops holding back the tears. He lets them spill out, sliding down the side of his face until they pool in his ear or disappear into his hair. He doesn't stifle the sound, and so it escapes him in tiny hiccupping gasps.

Yeonseok curls up against his side, arms going around him, uncaring about the grass on his clean pressed uniform. He whispers how much he loves Chanyeol into his ear, over and over, and it sounds to Chanyeol like Yeonseok might be crying too. Yeonseok, who never cries, is crying for Chanyeol.

“Yeonseok,” Chanyeol whispers, voice breaking. “Don’t...I...I don’t…” he stops. He doesn’t know what to do or say.

“Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” Yeonseok whispers back. He strokes the tears from Chanyeol’s face gently, the callouses of his strong fingers rough against Chanyeol’s cheeks. “This is so unfair. You’re too precious to be treated this way.”

Chanyeol’s breath comes jagged and harsh as his tears slow, and he lets the summer heat dry the tracks on his face. He keeps his eyes closed and waits for the return of his equilibrium.


	34. August 3rd

"…and then he told me they cut the best part out of the article. He’s been fighting hard to preserve it, but the editorial chief apparently wanted it out regardless of how good the wordplay was," Dr. Jeong Yongjun says, sipping his cup of coffee. It’s two in the afternoon and they just have time for a coffee break before the last of their patients. Sehun only started two days ago, so they share the patients that come into the clinic for now. Sehun has a training period of about fourteen days, but if he needs longer, Yongjun has no problem with it. The older doctor has gone above and beyond to make Sehun feel at home and he appreciates it. The friendly conversation during breaks, the ease into how things are done here and in private practice in general - Sehun couldn’t have asked for a better welcome. It’s just…

There’s a lingering feeling inside of Sehun, something the kind smile on the other dermatologist’s face, the waves of the beautiful beaches or kisses from Mikyung can’t quite seem to displace. Sehun misses his friends. He misses going to the fifth floor of Hangang University Hospital and dragging Jongin from his office. He misses bumping into Chanyeol and Jongdae in the hallways and he misses Baekhyun’s ridiculous jokes.

Sehun keeps telling himself it will go away. He just needs to settle, find his feet. It’s bound to feel strange at first in the small practice in comparison, with no colleagues even remotely close to his age. Yongjun is in his forties and the practice nurse and the receptionist are both old enough to be Sehun’s parents, and no matter how kind they are to him, Sehun will never be able to treat them with the casual ease he can the friends around his age. He hasn’t told Mikyung about how out of place he feels. It feels pathetic, when he was the one who kept telling her that he’d be fine and be able to make new friends when she’d worried about him. It’s not like he can never see his old friends again. Seoul is only a couple of hours away. Still, work is not the same without them there to brighten his day.

Besides, he’s happy. He’s happy in Busan with Mikyung. Moving in with her again has made every day a little brighter, a little easier. He loves coming home and having her there to welcome him, to talk to and share what they’ve done that day - his painfully empty apartment in Seoul just can’t be compared to that. She makes sure there’s more than ramen in the cupboards and they go surfing in the afternoon whenever the swell is good. Going to sleep with her warm body pressed up against his is everything he’s wished for in the last year.

“Sehun?” Yongjun asks. Sehun’s eyes widen a little, staring at the black liquid in his own cup. Oh fuck, he forgot to listen. Yongjun sends him a kind smile and empties his cup. “Ready for the next patient?”

Sehun nods hurriedly. He throws the rest of his lukewarm coffee he’d forgotten to drink in the sink with only minimal regret and as they go to see the next patient, Sehun refocuses his attention on her.

She's a 52-year-old woman who has suddenly developed lesions on her arms and hands. They itch but upon closer inspection don’t appear to leave scars underneath. She tells them she has a history of autoimmune disorders, including lupus. Yongjun turns to Sehun.

“What do you think?”

Sehun leans over to inspect the woman’s hands further. It’s not something he has come upon often when he was at the hospital but given her history, they’d be foolish not to do further testing.

“I’d like to take a biopsy,” he says, and Yongjun nods his approval. Sehun is allowed to take the biopsy, but it’s no different than what he has done at the hospital, so it’s quickly done.

“We’ll call you when we get the lab results back,” Yongjun tells the patient. Sehun’s mind detaches from the situation at hand, but this time he’s not thinking of his absent friends and the halls of Hangang. He spends the next thirty seconds mentally running through a differential diagnosis, blinking himself back to the present when Yongjun and the woman stand up and the patient leaves the clinic.

“What do you think?” Yongjun asks him. Sehun presses his lips together as he momentarily doubts himself; it’s a rare diagnosis he’s come up with, and he doesn’t want to seem like he’s trying to show off or trying to impress his new boss, but it being rare doesn’t make it impossible.

“Given her history and where the lesions show up, I suspect we might see an elevation of anti-RO on the serology report,” he says. “I think it might be subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus.”

Yongjun lifts his eyebrows, then nods.

“Interesting diagnosis. Let’s see when we get the results back.”

The last two patients are easier to deal with and with far more common diseases, and the woman with the strange lesions lingers in Sehun’s mind. The more he thinks of it, the surer he becomes of his diagnosis. He’s almost ready to bet on it when Yongjun stands up from his chair and distracts Sehun’s thoughts.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yongjun says and Sehun realizes it’s three thirty in the afternoon and their workday is over. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that time passed quickly. He nods and bows before Yongjun leaves him in the exam room so he can talk to the receptionist about something related to the business. Sehun slowly moves towards the room that will become his office when he’s seeing patients on his own to get his briefcase. Mikyung had bought it for him three days ago when he’d moved all his stuff into her house. It had been waiting for him on her dinner table, beautiful dark leather with a shoulder strap so he can easily carry it on his walk to and from work, with the words Oh Sehun, MD engraved on a small silver plate on the side. She had been so excited to see his face. Sehun had kissed her senseless and it had finally sunk in that it was here he was to be for the rest of his life, by her side in the southern city, but as he stares at the bag now, he doesn’t feel that excitement anymore. He shakes his head hard, hating how childish he’s being. He wanted this. Why is he whining, even if only internally, when everything has worked out just the way he wanted?

He walks down the street from the clinic. A small group of kids fly past him on scooters and BMX bikes, out of school for the summer. They’re probably headed to the skate park beside the beach. An elderly lady sweeping the entrance to her house sends him a smile and a wave, and Sehun waves back. The neighbors to the clinic already know he’s the new dermatologist and they seem to have taken a liking to him. On his left is the entrance to a walking path that snakes its way towards the beach and Sehun turns onto it. He pulls out his phone to check the swell report and the tide times, already planning to head out for a surf if it’s anything more than pancake flat. He’s still enjoying the fact that he can go surfing whenever he wants now, whether it’s at the local sandy beach five minutes walk from the dermatology clinic, or the bigger, more exciting but also more dangerous rocky breaks at the bays within 20 minutes’ drive. Either way, getting out into the water will help him clear out the stupid mixed feelings he can’t seem to stop thinking about.

As he nears the sandy beach, he hears the sound of the waves, then the high-pitched shrieks and laughter of kids. The local beach is less crowded than the popular tourist trap of Haeundae tends to be, since it’s further from the city, but the hot summer weather still draws many people out. Women and men dressed in bathing suits and shorts play in the water or soak up the sun from their beach towels and kids are everywhere, chasing each other or building sandcastles.

Sehun is overdressed for the beach in his work clothes, but he doesn’t care, just enjoying the smell of the ocean. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and continues on his way, following the path as it parallels the sand. The water is a vivid blue and sparkles in the sunlight, an offshore breeze lifting the small swell enough to make a surfable wave, but there are not many serious surfers out, at least not here, mostly kids messing around on bodyboards and skimboards in the shallows. The surfers will likely have found their way to the bays, less crowded and with better topography for good waves.

Twenty minutes later, Sehun stops and moves to the edge of the path, steps onto the sand and stares out towards the ocean, eyeing the inviting peel of the waves. He’ll definitely head out to one of the reef breaks today. He wishes he could bring his friends here, to see them play in the water and try out surfing, like Jongin had. He wonders how Chanyeol would fare and decides he would probably be even worse than Jongin. He wants to see Kyungsoo in the sunlight and see if he shrivels up and hisses at anything that isn’t the light of his computer screen. A grin spreads across his lips at the thought. He turns back to the path and sets a quicker pace towards home.

“I’m home!” he calls when he opens Mikyung’s front door. The call he receives in return comes from the lounge. He slips his shoes off and gratefully peels his socks off immediately as he steps inside. Mikyung peeks out from the longue and smiles at him.

“Hey baby,” she says. “You’re home later than usual.” They meet in the hall to kiss hello.

“I went by the beach on the way home,” Sehun explains when they part. “Waves look OK. I’m going to head out later if you want to come.”

Mikyung nods. “I’m in, when do you want to go?”

“Maybe half an hour? I’m gonna eat something first or I’ll starve to death out there.” Mikyung laughs and turns to go back to whatever she was doing in the lounge. “There’s chips in the cupboard next to the oven,” she calls over her shoulder as he heads into the bedroom to ditch his gross socks into the laundry and change from his work clothes into a comfortable t-shirt and board shorts.

Once changed, Sehun finds the bag of chips in the cupboard where Mikyung had said and brings it into the lounge. Mikyung is sitting cross-legged on the couch, face scrunched up in concentration as she struggles to thread a needle. There’s coloured cloth, pins and cotton reels all over the coffee table, apparently brand new as they’re surrounded by plastic packets. Sehun feels his eyebrows lift high. He’s never seen Mikyung sew. As far as he’s aware, she doesn’t know how.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Mikyung lifts her hands to show him, one holding the needle, the other holding the thread.

“Threading a needle,” she says.

Sehun smirks. “Trying to thread a needle,” he corrects, and Mikyung pokes her tongue out at him.

“My coworker is getting married in a month and our team decided to make a quilt for her. We’re all supposed to make a square,” she says, waving the needle dangerously in the air in her enthusiasm. Sehun takes a hasty step back. Mikyung turns her focus back on the needle, but fails to thread it once again. Instead it pricks her finger and draws a tiny drop of blood. Sehun sighs.

“Give me that,” he says and carefully takes the needle and thread from her fingers. He puts them down on the table with the unopened bag of chips and sits down on the couch next to her. She turns and pokes her finger in his face, the miniscule drop of blood drying quickly on her skin.

“I’m gravely wounded,” she says pathetically and Sehun thins his lips to hold back a chuckle. “It’s not funny! What is a doctor boyfriend for if he doesn’t take care of you when you’re hurt?” Mikyung takes her finger back, protecting it with her other hand, and Sehun can’t hold his chuckle back any longer. He winds his arms around her and pulls her closer and she almost falls into his lap when her legs get twisted in her seat.

“Poor little Mikyung.” Sehun is still only barely containing his laughter. Mikyung thrusts her finger in his face again so he can inspect the tiny drop of blood from the needle prick, but this time he grabs her finger so she can’t take it back. He turns it over and looks at it from different angles before he shakes his head.

“I think we’ll have to amputate,” he tells her seriously. Mikyung bites her lower lip.

“I knew it,” she says with a giggle hiding just underneath. Sehun lets go of her finger and reaches for the needle and thread again. As he leans back on the couch, he notices Mikyung staring at him as he deftly threads the needle in one try.

“What the fuck, how did you do that? I’ve been trying to do that for like 20 minutes!” Sehun shrugs a little. It’s really not that hard. Mikyung watches him pull the thread through and pick up the cloth from the table. “Wait, can you sew?” she asks incredulously.

“I did go through medical school, you know. Just because I don’t suture wounds often these days doesn’t mean I don’t know how to,” Sehun tells her. He might be a bit out of practice, but he’d been good at suturing in med school. He smiles a little as he remembers how he and Jongin had bought bunches of bananas and slit the skins with a scalpel so that they could suture them up again, ending up with piles of neatly stitched-up fruit. They use tools like needle drivers and tissue forceps rather than their fingers to suture, but it can’t be all that different using a needle and thread.

He furrows his eyebrows in concentration, but doesn’t get to make the first stitch before Mikyung has gently taken the needle and the fabric from him and put it down on the coffee table again. He looks at her questioningly.

“It can wait, I don’t have to hand it in for a few weeks. You’re hungry and we want to go surfing, let’s do it another time.” She reaches out for the bag of chips, opens it and feeds him one.

“You know, we’ll soon have been together for six years,” she says. Sehun nods, grabbing another few chips from the bag and shoving them in his mouth. They survived the dreadful year of long distance and now they’re back together. “My mother thinks it’s time we got married.”

Sehun chokes on his chips. He’s coughing like a madman and Mikyung reaches over to thump his back.

“She what?” His voice is hoarse and it hurts when he’s talking. Not that Sehun has never heard it said before. His own mother thought he should have proposed to Mikyung two years ago and had given him a long lecture about how he’s being complacent and lazy, putting off taking the next big step, which Sehun had listened to without protest and then completely ignored. It’s not his mom’s business what he and Mikyung do.

Of course, Sehun has had his own thoughts about marriage every now and then, but for some reason it has always seemed like something for the distant future. He’s always been too present with Mikyung to consider the future. It’s not that Sehun doesn’t want to marry her, God no. If the past year has proved anything to him, it’s that he’s absolutely useless without her by his side.

“She thinks we should get married,” Mikyung repeats and looks up in his face. “Do you want to get married, Sehun?”

Sehun coughs a few more times to clear his throat and stares down at her. His heart is beating a mile a minute at the thought of marriage and the sudden expectations of this conversation. There are so many possibilities. What if she doesn’t want to marry him? What if marriage isn’t their thing? What if - wait, is this a proposal? Isn’t he supposed to be the one proposing?

“Are you proposing?” he asks in a stunned whisper. Mikyung’s eyes go wide, jaw dropping, before she doubles over in laughter. Confused, Sehun watches her until she reaches up to pat his cheek affectionately.

“No, silly. I was just asking, is all,” she says. There’s a twinkle in her eye that makes her look mischievous and beautiful all at once. Sehun smiles at her as his heart settles down. The expectations that were there mere seconds ago seem to have all vanished with her laughter.

“Well, do you want to get married?” he asks her. She pokes his chest with a finger.

“Oh no you don’t. I asked first.”

Sehun stares out into the lounge. The answer is an obvious yes. Being with Mikyung for the rest of his life is the only thing that has ever really mattered ever since he met her six years ago at a big surfing competition in Jeju. He had been 24 years old, shy and overwhelmed with the amount of onlookers, and he’d wiped out on his first wave, landing himself in the bottom five. Even though the competition hadn’t gone as planned, Sehun still considers himself the winner of the day. In all honesty, it was mostly Mikyung’s doing, because when he’d seen her across the dance floor at the afterparty, drinks in hand and laughter in her eyes, he’d been too awestruck to even dare hope for a chance to talk to her, let alone get her number. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her for the entire night, only sipping off his beer occasionally, completely drunk on her appearance instead. It wasn’t until she’d walked over with her bright smile and kind eyes and asked his name and where he’d come from that Sehun had managed to actually start a conversation with her. Mikyung had been easy to talk to then, bringing out the best of him immediately and it had only taken him a few weeks before he was completely in over his head.

“Oh Sehun!” Mikyung pokes him again. Sehun looks down to meet her eyes.

“What?”

“Do you want to get married?” There’s a smile in her eyes but a serious undertone to her voice. It sounds like she’s nervous. As if his answer could be anything but yes. Sehun smiles at her.

“Of course, if that’s what you want,” he tells her. “As long as we’re together.”

It’s the complete truth. Married or not, It doesn’t matter to Sehun what label they carry as long as they’re together. He just wants to be with Mikyung forever.

“I’d like to get married too,” she tells him under her breath, a small relieved whisper, and Sehun chuckles. To think she ever doubted him. He leans down to press his lips to hers quickly, but the position is too awkward to be kissing for more than a second so he lets go and leans back against the couch again.

“I’d rather not have a big ceremony though,” he admits after a few moments of silence. Mikyung grins at him.

“You want to elope?” she asks. Sehun blinks at her.

“Elope? Who are we running away from?”

Mikyung snorts with laughter and reaches to grab his hand and link their fingers. Sehun’s pointer finger automatically starts caressing her hand.

“My mother,” Mikyung says impishly, and Sehun’s eyes widen a little as he considers the implications. She’s right. Miyoung would want to plan a huge, glamorous, outrageously expensive wedding with hundreds of guests invited, stressing them out for months beforehand with hundreds of details for this or that. Together with his own mother’s tendencies in the same direction, it would be a total nightmare. Sehun shudders at the mere thought, and Mikyung laughs, leaning against him fondly to look up into his face.

“Let’s run away from our mothers for sure,” he agrees. Mikyung gets up onto her knees and leans over to kiss him, and Sehun closes his eyes as he reciprocates.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks when she lets go.

“Sure about what?”

Mikyung rolls her eyes but the smile stays on her lips. “Marrying me, you fool.”

Sehun pulls her close to kiss her again. His whispered yes against her lips gets swallowed and Sehun focuses all his energy and attention on the kiss and love between them. They’re interrupted by his phone vibrating in his pocket, and Mikyung draws back and rearranges her hair while Sehun checks it. Jongin has sent him a selfie from the hospital cafeteria with Baekhyun, Minseok and Yixing in the background. We miss you, says the text message that follows the picture. They’re all pouting theatrically at the camera. Sehun stares at the picture as his stomach forms a knot. Mikyung leans over his shoulder at the sudden stillness and sees his old friends on the screen.

“You miss them, don’t you?” she whispers in his ear. Sehun nods. He hadn’t wanted to admit to it so soon, but with the picture on display, the text message there for her to read and his reaction, he knows she’s already aware. Even if he was to deny it, she’d call him out on his bullshit. Mikyung takes his phone from his hands and lifts it to take a selfie of the two of them. She smirks at the camera, a finger coyly in her dimple, and Sehun tries his hardest to send it a smile. He’s not sure he’s entirely successful. It’s Mikyung who sends the selfie back, accompanied by a message that lets them know he misses them too. She puts the phone on the coffee table and focuses her attention back on Sehun. Her hand reaches up to gently remove his fringe from his eyes.

“Why don’t you invite them here?” she suggests. “We could hold a summer party down at the beach. They can fly down if they don’t want to spend time on the road. The train is decent too. It would definitely be possible to find somewhere they could stay, there are loads of hotels here.”

Sehun considers the idea. His heart lifts at the thought of seeing everyone down here, but it’s far, and they all have their own lives. They won’t be missing him the way he’s missing them. “Would anyone want to come all the way down here just for me?” he wonders.

Mikyung gives a teasing gasp and squeezes his hand hard enough to make him yelp.

“Of course they’d want to come here for you! They’re your friends. Didn’t they just send you a text that said they miss you?” she asks and Sehun nods. They did. There’s photo proof of them pouting at him through the camera lens with a message underneath that says exactly that.

“And besides, the beach is great here. Seoul people love our beaches, they’d have a blast,” Mikyung continues, and Sehun fights his laugh to hear her refer to the Busan beaches as “our”, when she’s as much from Seoul as he is. She leans into him and looks up at him from where she’s placed her head on his shoulder. “Promise me to invite them. Tell them to bring their partners and families too. I still haven’t met Sohee yet, so Jongin better bring her. Let him know I said that.”

Sehun nods obediently. Mikyung puts his phone back in his hand, and Sehun sends a message to Jongin, asking what he thinks about coming down for a beach party, and if he thinks the others would be interested as well.

Jongin’s reply comes less than a minute later, a decisive hell yes!!!

\---

Joonmyun looks with curiosity at the setup as he takes the seat Kim Dongyoung points him towards. There’s a camera on a tripod pointing towards him, just above the screen of the laptop on which Joonmyun guesses he’ll be watching the footage Dongyoung has prepared for him. There’s some kind of fancy microphone set up too, looking to Joonmyun like some kind of insectoid space alien, set in a framework of spindly zig-zagging plastic bars. It all looks a lot more advanced than he’d expected. He’d assumed, when his young cousin had asked him to do this, that it was just something he did for fun, with his friends, but this whole setup looks so professional that Joonmyun wonders if he might have just gotten himself into something rather bigger than he’d realized. He’s vaguely aware that some “Youtubers” make so much money from their videos that they don’t need any other job, and a twinge of unease goes through him as he wonders if maybe he should have asked Dongyoung how many people would be likely to watch this before he’d agreed. But no, he tells himself. Surely Dongyoung’s channel won’t be like that. He probably just has such good equipment because of what he studies.

Dongyoung is studying media and communication at Korea University, and he’d contacted Joonmyun last week to ask him to make a guest appearance on his YouTube channel. He’d told Joonmyun that reactions to movies and TV shows by professionals in the field they depict are very popular at the moment, and he’d asked Joonmyun if he would mind commenting on the medical accuracy of a new medical drama that’s been airing for the last few weeks. Joonmyun had agreed without much thought. He’d been happy to help his young cousin out, and it can only be a good thing, he’d thought, if Dongyoung’s friends learn something useful instead of the random bizarreness that medical dramas usually come out with. Joonmyun never has time to watch them himself, and even if he does, usually the inaccuracy makes him cringe so much that he can’t really enjoy the show.

He watches Dongyoung busily do things with his camera and laptop and the big screen-covered light that looks like something out of a fashion photoshoot, and then come in front to sit in the chair next to Joonmyun. His followers like to see his face, since they think he’s handsome, he’d told Joonmyun with a grin that was half shy, half smug. He’ll be prompting Joonmyun if needed as they watch the medical drama together.

“Thanks for doing this,” Dongyoung says to him as he sits down, for at least the tenth time. He keeps using respectful language, even though Joonmyun has told him to drop the formalities and call him hyung. They’re both adults now, and Joonmyun isn’t that much older than his university-aged cousin. What’s a decade here or there, he tells himself, rather amused at his own thoughts as he assures Dongyoung yet again that he’s happy to be here.

He watches Dongyoung prepare the video for immediate play on the laptop and check the camera angle one last time, wondering awkwardly whether he’d sound like a complete idiot, or like he wants to back out, if he asked Dongyoung at this late stage how many people he expects to see this video. He’s wearing his white coat and I.D. badge as Dongyoung had asked, because his cousin says this will make him look more “authentic”. Joonmyun had laughed at the idea of being thought to be a fake if he wasn’t wearing a white coat, and besides, any random person could buy themselves a set of scrubs and a white coat from a uniform supply store if they wanted to impersonate a doctor, but whatever. He’s not a Youtuber. He’ll bow to his young cousin’s expertise in this field.

After checking Joonmyun is ready, Dongyoung reaches forward and turns on the camera. He lights up in a smile as he begins an introductory spiel. Joonmyun can see the footage they’re making in the turned-back wing of the camcorder. It looks very professional with the white background of the wall corner behind them. You’d never know that on the other side of the camera was the typical disaster zone of a 2-person university dorm room.

“Today we’re going to be watching some scenes from the first three episodes of Residents, the new medical drama which has scored high ratings already,” Dongyoung explains. “Luckily for me, I happen to have a family member who is an actual, real life surgeon. This is my cousin Kim Joonmyun, who is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Hangang University Hospital here in Seoul.”

Joonmyun bows in his seat and smiles in the direction of the camera. Dongyoung thanks him for “guesting” yet again. He asks Joonmyun what a cardiothoracic surgeon actually does, and Joonmyun explains his role to Dongyoung briefly. It’s more comfortable to look at his cousin while he talks than straight at the camera like Dongyoung had done, but Dongyoung doesn’t seem to mind. Then Dongyoung starts to play the footage he’s prepared. He’s combined the most interesting scenes of the drama into about half an hour’s worth of footage.

Joonmyun sits forward a little and focuses on the footage playing on the laptop screen. Dongyoung has told him that during editing, he’ll add a small window playing the same footage so that his viewers can see what they’re talking about. Some of the premise and character introduction scenes have been cut out, so Joonmyun doesn’t have a clue what is going on plotwise, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s only here to comment on the medical accuracy. The camera follows a man getting followed by another man with a knife, and before long the knife is embedded in the first man’s back. He collapses down to the street on his front, losing consciousness as the criminal runs away. Passers by start to gather.

“The important thing to know about any injury involving something embedded in a person’s body - a knife, a nail, a piece of glass, whatever - is that you never, never take it out yourself,” Joonmyun says as a couple of passers-by kneel down beside the stab victim. “The most important thing is to stop the bleeding, and whatever is embedded in the body is putting pressure on the arteries and veins so that they don’t bleed as much. Take that out and everything’s going to bleed freely. So these people are doing the right thing by not touching the knife and calling an ambulance.”

They watch a bit longer. Joonmyun nods as the paramedics give appropriate emergency aid, and before long the stabbed man is in surgery to get the knife taken out of his back. The OR looks pretty realistic too, and everyone is wearing appropriate protective gowns, gloves, masks and caps. Joonmyun watches as the surgery proceeds according to plan for the first few moments.

Then, of course, comes the drama. The EKG monitor that was previously showing a nice stable tracing, the rhythmic pulse spike jumping up and down at a shocky but stable 120, flatlines. The long, sustained tone fills the OR.

“Asystole,” Joonmyum mumbles, leaning forward a little more. He’s starting to get caught up in the situation as he puts himself in the surgeon’s place. He’d start CPR immediately, have a theatre nurse give 1 mg epinephrine intravenously -

The lead surgeon calls for the defibrillator. Joonmyun groans and flops backward in his chair as the paddles are charged, the asystolic flatline on the monitor continuing.

“What?” Dongyoung asks, grinning.

“It’s wrong, that’s what,” Joonmyun tells him, mildly exasperated as he shakes his head at the laptop screen. “There’s no point in shocking an asystolic rhythm, it just won’t work. The heart has no electrical activity - that’s what is showing on the EKG monitor, the flat line with no electrical impulse to power the heart muscle - so using the defibrillator is completely pointless. Worse than pointless, actually, because it’s never a good thing to get an electric shock you don’t need. That surgeon needs to start CPR and administer epinephrine.”

“When do you use the defibrillator, then?” asks Dongyoung.

“That’s for when the heart is having an electrical impulse abnormality. Sometimes, giving a shock can restore normal heart rhythms. There are four types of heart rhythm abnormalities and only two are shockable, ventricular fibrillation, which we call v-fib or VF, and pulseless ventricular tachycardia, or VT. In VF you can imagine the heart is like a bowl of quivering jelly. There are electrical impulses, but they’re chaotic and the heart is uncoordinated, so it’s not getting any blood through. In VT the heart is beating so fast that it’s become inefficient, not getting enough blood through with each beat. Shocking the heart in those rhythms can sometimes reset the electrical signals back into a normal rhythm.”

“What’s the fourth rhythm then, the other one you can’t shock? VF, VT, and asystole makes three,” Dongyoung says.

“The fourth is called pulseless electrical activity, or PEA,” Joonmyun explains. He’s stopped watching the drama, he’s so into what he’s saying. He loves talking about his field and Dongyoung is acting like he’s actually interested, which is usually enough for Joonmyun to keep talking until someone tells him to shut up. “That’s when there is electrical activity, but the heart muscle isn’t responding to it. The EKG monitor looks similar to a normal sinus rhythm, with the regular spikes that you normally see, but the heart isn’t actually beating, so there’s no pulse. Obviously there’s no point in shocking that either, because it’s a muscle issue, not an electrical one.”

“Obviously,” Dongyoung echoes, grinning slightly. “So the monitor is actually reading the electrical signals, not the physical beating of the heart?”

“Right,” Joonmyun says. “The EKG readings can be misleading in a case of PEA.”

“So what do you do about PEA then?”

“Same as asystole, basically. CPR and intravenous drugs that can help restart the heart muscle. I’d love to see a show actually document PEA accurately. I’ve never seen anything but the dramatic flatline.”

They both look back to the screen just in time to see the medical team administer their last shock. Joonmyun laughs. “Wow, it magically worked. I wish I had a defibrillator like that.” The patient’s heartbeat is back, the theatre staff giving each other relieved smiles. “So yeah, in reality, this is not going to happen. Also, with the asystolic rhythm, even if you do it right and give CPR and epinephrine, it’s really rare that you can get a heartbeat back again. It seems like at least half the time in these kinds of situations on TV the person is resuscitated, but the success rate of surviving asystole is actually less than 2%.”

“Wow,” Dongyoung says. “You’re right, it certainly seems to work a lot more often than that in the TV shows.”

They watch the drama for a while longer, a few more scenes in which nothing remarkably wrong happens. Then the scene cuts to a sleepy female resident being woken up in a resident dorm room, with what looks like about six sets of bunk beds. The resident talks to her colleague who’s standing in the doorway.

“We have resident dorms like this at my hospital, one for men and one for women, as well as a small call room in each department with one or two beds,” Joonmyun explains. “Residents stay onsite when they’re on call, and attendings use the call rooms when we’re on night shifts - whoa, okay then.” The resident in the doorway has gone, and now the resident in the bed pulls back the blanket a little to reveal that she has a probably-naked young man in the bed beside her, hiding under the blanket.

“Well,” Joonmyun says. He’s kind of shocked. Dongyoung cracks up.

“I’m guessing that’s another thing that doesn’t happen?”

Joonmyun eyes the screen dubiously. “I can’t swear that it never happens, but I’ve never come across or heard of anyone having sex in the residency dorm. It’s like any workplace - it’s not appropriate. Besides, anyone could walk in at any time, like just happened there.” He grins suddenly at the camera. “If there are any med students watching, that’s unprofessional, people. Save it for your bedroom.”

“Sound advice, Dr. Kim,” Dongyoung says, sounding like he’s trying hard not to laugh.

The rest of the clips aren’t remarkable, and Dongyoung finishes off his video by thanking Joonmyun for coming and turning back to his camera to tell people to like and subscribe. When he turns the camera off, Joonmyun releases a sigh of relief.

“You were great,” Dongyoung says. “I can make a fantastic video from this.”

“It wasn’t boring?” Joonmyun asks doubtfully. “I know I can get way too enthusiastic about things like heart rhythm abnormalities.”

“No, it was great. You really know what you’re talking about. People are going to love you, I can tell,” Dongyoung says. Joonmyun rubs the back of his neck and smiles at his young cousin. He doesn’t really have any concept of people liking him just because they saw him on a YouTube video, but if people will learn something from it, then Joonmyun is happy.

Dongyoung’s roommate comes back from class then, and Joonmyun declines their invitation to stay for a drink. The kids are just being polite, he’s sure, they won’t really want him around. Besides, it’s getting close to six pm and he has to go straight to the hospital for his night shift starting at seven. He cheerfully agrees to Dongyoung’s tentative suggestion to come back and do a second video if his subscribers like it, and makes his way off campus. It was fun to be able to comment all he wants without Yejin pouting at him for ruining all the drama of the story.

He makes it to the hospital by half past six and stops in the cafeteria on the ground floor to get some dinner before it all starts. He glances around and spots Yixing sitting by himself at a corner table, staring emptily into space while his soup sits untouched in front of him. Smiling a little to himself, Joonmyun heads over and slides into the seat opposite. Yixing is so gone that he doesn’t even notice Joonmyun arriving until Joonmyun leans forward and snaps his fingers in front of his face.

“Oh,” Yixing says, awareness visibly returning to his eyes as he refocuses. Joonmyun might actually be worried about this level of spacing out if it wasn’t Yixing, who has always been like this and probably always will be. “Hi, Joonmyun.”

“What planet were you on this time?” Joonmyun teases.

“Nowhere good,” Yixing says. He looks tired, now that Joonmyun looks at him.

“Oh dear,” Joonmyun says. “What’s up?”

“It’s this patient, a Mr. Lee,” Yixing says. “I treated him for throat cancer last year, removed a tumour. I tried to get him to stop smoking so many times, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Now the cancer is back and it’s metastasized to his lungs too. If only I’d been able to convince him to stop smoking, this might not have happened. Now it’s probably terminal.” He looks so defeated, like the failure to stop his patient from smoking is somehow Yixing’s fault.

Joonmyun shakes his head. Smoking is such a terrible addiction. He’s not really surprised to hear that the patient didn’t stop smoking even when faced with the fact that the addiction was killing him. He looks with some concern at Yixing’s face. He’s sensed over their growing friendship how highly empathetic Yixing is, and he works in oncology, where patients die more often than in most specialties. Joonmyun knows the burnout rate among doctors who deal with a lot of death is high.

“Yixing, you can’t let it get to you,” he says gently.

Yixing looks back at Joonmyun hollowly.

“How?” he asks. “How do I not let it get to me? I try, Joonmyun, I really do. After Sooyoung, I promised I wouldn’t let myself care so much anymore, I wouldn’t put myself through that again, but I can’t seem to control it. I don’t know how to not care.” There’s something close to desperation in his voice, his eyes. “How do you do it, Joonmyun? You must lose patients, too.”

Joonmyun nods, finding his own forehead creasing in mirror of Yixing’s, both of their meals forgotten in front of them.

“I learned pretty early on to kind of turn down the knob on my emotions,” he says. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s like turning down a dimmer switch, so that they don’t affect me too much when I need to focus. Then, later, when everything’s over...well, I have to go somewhere on my own, so I can turn it back up, let myself feel everything until the worst of it is gone.”

Yixing leans back, looking defeated. “I don’t know how to do it. That emotional dimmer switch you talk about, I don’t think I have one.”

“I’m sure it’s not the same for everyone,” Joonmyun says. “That’s just how I deal with it.” He hesitates. “Don’t you have any coping mechanism at all?”

“I have Songmi,” Yixing says, a tiny, sad smile touching his lips. “She’s good at making me feel better, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling it all over again the next time I have a patient. It’s just a constantly repeating cycle. It’s like I keep on ripping the scab off a wound that’s barely healed over.”

“Oncology must be really hard for that,” Joonmyun says, and Yixing nods, looking exhausted.

“I shouldn’t complain. I get to help a lot of people, too,” he says. “That’s worth a bit of struggle on my part, isn’t it?”

Joonmyun hesitates, looking at him worriedly.

“I think it depends on how much you’re struggling,” he says. “Because to me...it sounds like more than a bit.”

Yixing’s gaze goes distant again, and he doesn’t reply. Joonmyun lets him go. He takes the opportunity to mix his rice and vegetables and eats a few bites. He has no idea how long Yixing has been here, but his soup feels stone cold when he puts a hand against the bowl. Yixing doesn’t appear to notice when Joonmyun stands up, takes his food away, and goes back to the serving line to get him something warm. When Joonmyun returns, he slides the fresh food in front of him.

“Yixing,” he says. Yixing blinks his way back and sends him a small smile. Joonmyun nods at the tray in front of him. “Eat.”

Yixing obediently picks up his chopsticks and starts to eat. He doesn’t seem to notice that his soup has turned into rice and vegetables. Joonmyun sighs a little, and finishes the rest of his own meal, now also nearly cold, though he doesn’t really mind.

When they’re finished, Yixing goes to collect Songmi from her shift in the ED. Joonmyun watches him go, still a little uneasy at the level of desperation he’d seen in Yixing’s eyes. He’s glad Yixing has Songmi, who as a trauma nurse, certainly understands better than most the difficulties medical professionals go through.

He heads up to the cardiology floor to get the handover of the night’s admitted patients from the day staff. He usually has five or six night shifts per month, with the following day off. He’s come a long way with coping with night shifts since he was a resident, but it’s never easy. If he has a busy night with emergency situations, sometimes he has to stay at the hospital and sleep before he’s safe to drive home. He’d once fallen asleep at a red light when waiting at a junction and had only been woken by a pedestrian knocking on his window. It scared him enough that ever since, he always makes sure he’s had some sleep before driving.

Tonight’s shift starts off with a bang when he’s called down to the ED five minutes after getting up to cardiology for a multi-car traffic accident, and it doesn’t let up from then on. Joonmyun is in surgery for a traumatic aortic dissection from 8 pm. He does an active bypass for the dissection, and then is shunted straight into a complex pulmonary tractotomy for a penetrating lung injury in the neighboring OR. The adrenaline of the emergencies keeps him awake and alert, but the continued stress is exhausting. At 4 am he’s been on his feet and using intense focus for a solid eight hours, and he feels slightly dizzy with exhaustion. He scrubs out for the third time that night, walks out of the scrubbing area and collapses onto a bench against the wall in the corridor, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. He hears someone else sit down beside him with a similarly exhausted sigh, and doesn’t need to open his eyes again to recognize the sigh as belonging to Minseok. The ED chief has been having to use his trauma surgery expertise with the unusual amount of emergency surgical fixes needed tonight.

Joonmyun breathes deeply, consciously relaxing all the muscles in his body and releasing the tension. A warm weight slides onto his shoulder, and he opens his eyes and looks over to find that Minseok has just fallen asleep against his shoulder. Joonmyun smiles a little at how young the ED chief looks when he’s asleep.

He considers waking Minseok up so that they can both go and try to grab some sleep in a more comfortable place than the bench outside the operating rooms, but decides against it. They’ll probably only get called again, and besides, he’s too tired to be bothered moving. He shifts a little so that their weights are balanced and closes his own eyes, letting the exhaustion pull him into the relief of sleep.

They both wake with a start when Minseok’s pager goes. Minseok fumbles for it as Joonmyun leans forward on his knees and rubs his face with both hands. “Need me?” he mumbles without looking up. He feels kind of sick at the sudden awakening.

Minseok pats his back with a warm hand. “Not at this stage. Sorry for falling asleep on you,” he says, sounding a little embarrassed.

Joonmyun waves his apology off. He fell asleep too, after all. He briefly considers staying here and sleeping more, but forces himself to get up and head towards the elevators. The call room will be a lot more comfortable than the bench, and with any luck, he won’t be needed again tonight and can get a couple of hours before he has to wake up and hand over to the morning staff.

He gets to the cardiology call room, only to find that the third-year resident has passed out on top of the bed there rather than going up to the resident’s dorm on the top floor. Joonmyun backs out, closing the door quietly. He does not blame the resident, she’s at least as tired as Joonmyun is, probably more. He gets back into the lift and takes it to the top floor. The resident’s dorm is always a lot more disruptive to sleep in because of people coming in and out, and pagers going off randomly everywhere, but it’s still better than a bench somewhere in a corridor.

The lights are dim on the top floor and the air-con is much chillier than in the ORs, making goosebumps rise up on Joonmyun’s bare forearms. He makes his way down the silent corridor to the men’s resident dorm and pushes the door open wearily, glancing around for the first free bed as he steps through. There’s movement and noise in the dim room and his eyes automatically seek out the offending bed.

It takes Joonmyun’s sleep-deprived brain a second too long to register that what he is seeing is not a person kicking the blankets around in sleep, as he’d at first assumed, but in fact two very naked people on the bottom bunk, hands secured tightly on shoulders and sweat glistening on naked skin. Groans and moans escape them with a few curse words sprinkled in between. Just there, yes, oh my god, fuck. Joonmyun finds himself staring blankly at the scene in complete and total shock. All appropriate reactions are way beyond his grasp, and all that’s left to do is stand there, frozen.

Somehow a strangled, wordless noise issues from his throat. The bouncing couple on the bed goes still. Two wide-eyed, startled faces peer around at him. There’s a moment of silence while the visual input registers in Joonmyun’s brain. The girl on top is the cardiology intern, Lee Kyungri, and the man under her is the junior neurosurgery resident he constantly crosses paths with in the ED, Huang Zitao.

There’s a high-pitched screech and a frantic fumble for blankets to cover themselves up. Somewhere amidst his shock, Joonmyun registers that the screech had come out of Zitao.

“Dr. Kim!” Kyungri squeaks as she peeps at him from under the blankets, eyes like saucers.

At the sound of his name, Joonmyun finally unfreezes. He slaps a hand over his eyes and shuts them tight for good measure, backing blindly towards the door.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he apologizes, bowing repeatedly with each apology as he backs towards the door. He fumbles for the door handle, steps out into the corridor and shuts it with a bang. From inside, he hears muffled voices, the surprised rise in their tones. Somewhere among his shock and intense embarrassment, Joonmyun realises they’d probably checked the rosters and figured out that the cardiology resident who would have been here is a girl, so they’d have been safe enough in the men’s dorm, only Joonmyun had turned up instead. He leans with his back against the door, trying to calm himself down, as the voices inside turn to a string of high-pitched hysterical giggles. It sounds like they’re coming from both Kyungri and Zitao.

“What the heck,” he mumbles, staring without seeing at the noticeboard across the corridor. Right after he’d told Dongyoung and however many people are going to watch his YouTube video that this doesn’t happen in hospital dorms. Is the universe playing some kind of cosmic joke on him?

He sighs, slumping a little more against the door. He has no idea how they find the energy at four in the morning on a night shift. Kids these days, he thinks, then laughs softly to himself at how like an old fogey he sounds, even in his own mind. Well, he won’t be sleeping here tonight, that’s for sure. His amusement rapidly fades as his tiredness takes back over from the shock. He doesn’t care what the kids get up to. He just wants to sleep. Looks like it’s going to be his office couch, then. At least his office isn’t likely to have any unexpected surprises going on inside it.


	35. August 16th

Baekhyun lies upside down on the sofa in the living room, sweatpant-clad legs up the back and his head hanging backward over the edge as he holds his phone in both hands, tapping rapidly with his thumbs. He’s got two chats going on simultaneously, one with Sehun in Busan, and the other with Lu Han, who is picking Baekhyun up at 6 tonight so they can spend the evening together. That’s the main reason for Baekhyun’s current state of upside-downness; he’s excited about seeing Lu Han and sitting in a normal position is just too much to ask. He can’t believe there’s still two hours to go before Lu Han is going to pick him up, and he kicks his feet against the couch as he messages Lu Han to that effect, grinning like an idiot when Lu Han sends back a sticker of some cute Japanese anime bishounen, eyes brimming with tears. Chanyeol laughs at him as he wanders through on his way from the bedroom to the kitchen. It’s Saturday afternoon and neither of them are on shift, but Yeonseok is working until 6.

“It’s weird not having Sehun around anymore,” Baekhyun calls, hearing the sound of Chanyeol rummaging around in the freezer, doubtless for one of the multiple flavours of melona popsicles he keeps in there.

“I know,” Chanyeol says. “I miss that kid, but he’ll be happier in Busan with Mikyung. He really suffered without her this year. You want a melona?”

“Nah, I’m good. Oh, I’m going to Lu Han’s for dinner later, by the way,” Baekhyun says as he taps another encouraging message to Sehun, who has been messaging Baekhyun more in the few weeks since he’s moved down than he ever has before. It seems to Baekhyun that Sehun is having a bit of difficulty adjusting, but it’s early days yet, and like Chanyeol said, Sehun has Mikyung now. He reminds Sehun that they’ll all be coming down to see him in two weeks’ time for his beach party, and then Sehun will doubtless be whining that everyone is too much and wondering when they’ll get out of his hair, snickering to himself at the outraged look he can just picture on Sehun’s face.

The cushions puff up as Chanyeol drops down onto the couch beside him, making Baekhyun bounce a little on his back. His eyes leave the phone screen long enough to glance up at Chanyeol from below as he tears open his melona wrapper and takes a large chomp out of the top.

“I’ll never understand how you can do that,” Baekhyun says. If he bit into ice-cold stuff like that his teeth would scream at him. Chanyeol just grins at him and takes another bite, making Baekhyun wince.

“Dinner with Lu Han, huh?” he asks. “Seems like you spend more time with him than you do here, these days. I guess you really get on with him.”

“He’s great,” Baekhyun says, eyes going distant as he thinks of Lu Han, and how perfect he is in every way, and the special way his eyes go soft when he smiles at Baekhyun. “I really like him.”

Chanyeol looks at him carefully, the silence growing enough that Baekhyun comes out of his dreams and glances up at Chanyeol again.

“Baekhyun...” Chanyeol starts, cautiously. “I might be wrong about this, but the couple of times I met Lu Han, when he came to pick you up and drop you off...have you noticed the way he looks at you?”

Baekhyun’s heart swells. He knows exactly what Chanyeol is tiptoeing around, and the fact that Chanyeol has seen that Lu Han looks at him in a special way too makes a warm feeling unfurl in the middle of his chest and grow out to fill all his limbs. He wriggles himself around until his head is in Chanyeol’s lap and smiles up at him happily. 

“He likes me,” he says. “He told me so. He says I’m beautiful.” He feels oddly shy as he says the word, because before Lu Han, Baekhyun had never really thought of applying that word to himself. In the past, it’s always been him telling his girlfriend that she’s beautiful. He’s never been the one praised. “He didn’t mind that I’ve only been with girls before. He said we could try anyway.”

Chanyeol’s eyes are round with surprise, the forgotten half-eaten melona in his hand forming creamy pale green drips that start to descend slowly down its side. Baekhyun catches a drop on one finger before it can land on his face and licks the sweet melon flavour off it. 

“Are you saying Lu Han is dating you?” Chanyeol asks, gaping at him. “And you’re…”

“Yeah, I’m dating him right back,” Baekhyun says, and laughs. “You look like a stunned fish.”

Chanyeol closes his mouth, then absent-mindedly licks his melona again. “I mean...I am pretty surprised. You’ve never shown interest in guys before, as far as I know.”

Baekhyun grips his phone a little tighter, pulling his lower lip between his teeth as the self-doubt that is never far away these days rises to the surface. “I know,” he says. “I was a bit confused too, actually...but you know, I only had a couple of non-serious girlfriends in high school, and then it was all Nari.” His breath catches a little in his throat, and Chanyeol puts a gentle hand on his hair. Baekhyun closes his eyes, enjoying the caress. “When Lu Han told me he was bisexual - he’s out, by the way, he said I could tell you and Yeonseok if I wanted - and he told me I was gorgeous, and asked me if I’d consider trying, I just somehow thought that maybe I could. I think Lu Han is really beautiful, Chanyeol, ever since I first saw him I thought so. And he’s really nice to me. I like him so much. So I’ve been thinking...maybe it doesn’t matter to me what the gender is. I like the person, not their gender. It’s just happened so far that the people I’ve liked have been female.”

“If you have feelings for Lu Han, then you’re probably right,” Chanyeol says, and something tight in Baekhyun’s chest loosens a little. “But Baekhyun...you’ll be careful, right?”

Baekhyun looks up at him again, forehead wrinkling a little in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just...it’s just that Lu Han is the first person to have shown interest in you romantically since Nari,” Chanyeol says, very carefully. “I’m just a little worried, Baek. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Are you saying Lu Han is - what, a rebound or something?” Baekhyun sits up to look at Chanyeol properly. It’s a surprisingly upsetting idea, and he hears how his voice betrays him, raising higher in pitch at the end. “It’s been more than half a year since Nari, Chanyeol!”

“I know,” Chanyeol says. “I’m not saying he’s a rebound, but you’ve told me what you and your therapist have been working on, about how emotionally dependent you’d gotten on Nari. If Lu Han is starting to give you the affection you lost again...it’s just that I can see how you might gravitate towards that. I just want you to be careful.”

Baekhyun’s breath is coming fast, tears prickling at his eyes. “No,” he says. “It’s not like that. Lu Han really likes me, and I like him too. It’s nothing messed up or anything. I don’t just like him because he’s showing me affection, I’m not - I’m not that fucked up, Chanyeol.” Even the idea is making Baekhyun’s chest hurt.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says. He’s looking worried now. “Baekhyun, it’s okay, I believe you. Don’t get upset. I was just worried about you.”

Baekhyun feels like he’s going to cry. “I know I’ve messed up a lot,” he says. “But I’m better now. I’m not so dumb that I’d rebound on the first person that shows interest in me.” I’m not, he tells himself, furiously rubbing his eyes to try and stop the tears falling. I’m really not.

Chanyeol pulls him into a hug. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, Baekhyun. I hear you. I’m happy for you, that you’ve found Lu Han and things are going well, I really am.”

Baekhyun presses his face hard into Chanyeol’s shoulder, hating how he’s reacting so emotionally at the first indication of being challenged. 

“Sorry,” he says shakily. “It’s just that hearing you saying my feelings might not be valid just because I’ve been sick is really upsetting.”

“Oh no, Baekhyun, I’m so sorry,” Chanyeol says. “I didn’t mean to make you feel invalid. It’s because I care about you. You know that, right?”

Baekhyun sighs, his arms going around Chanyeol to hug him back. “Yeah, of course I know that,” he says. Chanyeol has proven that to him a thousand times over this past year. “You’ve been a better friend than I could ever deserve.”

“Hey,” Chanyeol says, pulling back to look at his face. “None of that. You deserve good friends just as much as anyone else does.”

Baekhyun nods, sniffing. He’s not really crying, really, just a little damp around the eyes and worked up. Chanyeol has put his melona down on the coffee table, where it’s melted into a sticky green puddle. “Oh man, I’m sorry. I made you waste your melona.”

Chanyeol laughs. “It’s okay. Plenty more where that came from.”

“I’ll clean it up,” Baekhyun says, scrubbing his eyes on his sleeve as he jumps up to go to the kitchen and get a cloth. He feels unstable and shaky inside. He needs to calm down. Chanyeol was just being a good friend, making sure things were okay. And things are okay. He’s all better now, and Baekhyun needs to prove that by acting like a mature adult who can discuss feelings rationally, not a moody teenager throwing a tantrum at the first sign of trouble.

The doorbell goes just as he’s wiping up the mess from the coffee table. Chanyeol stands up to get the door, wondering aloud who it could be. They’re not expecting visitors yet, Lu Han isn’t coming for another two hours, and Yeonseok isn’t due back until half past 6. Baekhyun gets distracted from his cleaning task when his messenger alert goes. It’s Sehun again, sending him a picture of the beach he’s about to go surfing at, golden sand and bright blue water reflecting the cloudless sky. Some of the shakiness fades from Baekhyun as he gazes at the photo. It feels like forever since he’s seen the ocean. He’s looking forward to going down to the beach, and also to seeing Sehun again. He wants to make sure the kid is really doing okay.

He hears Chanyeol’s voice from the doorway, then two sets of footfalls approaching. He finishes wiping up the melona and stands up just as Chanyeol re-enters the lounge area. Baekhyun nearly drops the cloth as he stares at the tall, broad-shouldered man following Chanyeol in. It’s Chanyeol’s father.

Baekhyun knows Chanyeol’s father, of course. He’s met both his parents many times over the years of their friendship, and he’d been simultaneously horrified, appalled and furious that they’d done such a cruel thing to Chanyeol, who had suffered so long in fear only to be rejected the moment he’d come out to them. He’d come home near-dead on his feet after the fight at his nephew’s birthday party, terrifying Baekhyun with how hollow his eyes had looked. Baekhyun could only thank God Yeonseok had been there. 

Baekhyun clenches both his fists, the one with the cloth oozing drops of sticky melon back down onto the table.

“Hello, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol’s father says, a little awkwardly, offering Baekhyun a hesitant smile. Baekhyun stares back at him wordlessly, practically feeling his hackles rise. He suddenly has no doubt that if Chanyeol’s dad says one bad thing to his best friend right now, Baekhyun will absolutely punch him in the face, no matter if he’s probably twice Baekhyun’s size. Chanyeol looks at Baekhyun and gives a sudden laugh. It’s too loud, booming in Chanyeol’s anxiety, but at least his friend stops looking like he’s about to pass out.

“It’s okay, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says. “Dad’s not…”

“I’m here to apologize,” Chanyeol’s father says. “And to tell my son that no matter what, I love him, and I’m here for him. Always.” He puts an arm around Chanyeol’s back, gripping his arm, and Baekhyun watches Chanyeol’s eyes fill with tears, even as the smile grows on his face.

Nodding slowly, Baekhyun backs out of the living room. He drops the cloth in the sink and rinses sticky green gunk from his hand, watching Chanyeol and his father sit on the living room couch from the corner of his eye. Baekhyun hears the more gravelly tone of the older male speaking, and when he looks again properly, Chanyeol is wrapped in his father’s arms, face hidden from sight as his father gently pats his back.

Baekhyun tiptoes past and goes into his room, closing the door behind him. He’s so relieved. His parents broke Chanyeol’s heart when they rejected him like that and even though Baekhyun thinks his father is rather late in coming to make things right, at least he’s come at all. It’s more important that Chanyeol knows that he’s supported and loved by at least one parent.

He passes the next hour or so playing Halo, then starts to get ready for his date with Lu Han. Anticipation tingles at him as he dresses in pale blue jeans and an oversized, long-sleeved collared shirt. It’s hot outside, but these days he feels more comfortable fully covered despite the heat, hiding his bony limbs and the messy tell-tale scar on his left wrist in comforting fabric. Lu Han is inviting him to his apartment for the first time, because he wants to cook dinner for Baekhyun, and if Lu Han’s fancy cars are anything to go by, his apartment is bound to be modern enough to have air-conditioning. He puts on some of the eyeliner Lu Han likes, quite expert at it by now. Then, when Lu Han messages him that he’s waiting outside, he slips out of his room and peeks into the lounge. Chanyeol and his father are still there, a couple of opened beers on the coffee table, and talking in low voices. The atmosphere feels comfortable, friendly, so when they look up at him Baekhyun gives them both a smile.

“I’m going out now,” he says, waving a hand that’s almost completely covered by the cuff of his oversized shirt. Chanyeol tells him to have a good time, and Baekhyun almost skips his way out of the apartment and down the corridor to the elevator.

Lu Han is waiting outside the front of the building in his silver Audi convertible. Baekhyun is delighted. He loves this car. He slides in, beaming at Lu Han, who smiles back at him with that special softness in his eyes.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he says. Baekhyun wriggles a little with sheer happiness. 

“Hi,” he says, clipping himself in. “Can we -”

Lu Han is already pressing the button to open the convertible roof, laughing. Baekhyun loves it when Lu Han laughs. It turns the almost surreal beauty of his face into something much more human and accessible, smile wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes.

“I know by now how much you love the roof down,” he says. “You’re like a puppy, wanting your nose in the flowing air.”

“I have been compared to a puppy before,” Baekhyun admits rather sheepishly, which just makes Lu Han laugh again. 

Lu Han drives in a very exciting way. At least when he’s not navigating flood waters in an SUV, he takes the roads with both style and unbridled joy, weaving between slower traffic on the freeway, spinning the wheel like they’re in a racing game. It thrills Baekhyun to feel the power of the engine shoot them forward when Lu Han accelerates, but he never feels unsafe. Lu Han has absolute control of his vehicle.

“Want to see me overtake a Ferrari?” Lu Han calls over the noise of the wind, eyes sparkling.

“Yes!” Baekhyun cries, and whoops as Lu Han presses his foot down. The Audi roars forward, smoothly passing the Ferrari and weaving in again in front.

“Look at him scowl! Didn’t know what hit him,” Lu Han says smugly, glancing in the rearview mirror at the rapidly receding Ferrari. Baekhyun laughs, feeling the wind tear through his hair, and thinks how wonderful it is to be able to feel this again. Happiness. Freedom.

Lu Han lives in a fancy apartment complex, as Baekhyun had rather expected, and he’s on the eighteenth floor. He parks his Audi in the basement next to the red SUV of their river rescue adventure and they take a high-speed elevator up to the eighteenth floor. There are only four doors in the eighteenth floor lobby, and given the size of the building in general Baekhyun knows that means the apartments are bound to be large and classy. Lu Han keys his code into the electronic lock and opens his door a little way, just enough to squeeze himself in as he crouches down. Puzzled, Baekhyun watches as Lu Han stands up again, a small grey cat in his arms.

“Sorry,” he says. “The cat is a total escape artist and she always waits right by the door for me to get home.”

Baekhyun nearly melts. He loves animals, and the cat is so adorable, and the fact that Lu Han owns a cat just makes him even more perfect in Baekhyun’s eyes. He steps forward to stroke her head. She’s not shy at all, rubbing her head against his fingers eagerly. Seeing this, Lu Han shoves the cat into Baekhyun’s arms without a word of warning and turns to flick the lights on and open the door wider to let them in. Startled, Baekhyun holds the cat in his arms and giggles when she pokes a cold nose into the gap between the single undone button of his shirt, nosing the hollow of his throat. Like this, he steps into a cool, crisp internal atmosphere behind Lu Han, who closes the door behind him. 

“What’s the cat’s name?” Baekhyun asks.

“She doesn’t have one,” Lu Han says, picking up both of their shoes and putting them inside a cupboard recessed into the wall. “She’s too much of a snob to answer to a name, so I just call her cat. It’s revenge.”

Baekhyun laughs, stroking the cat’s head with his fingers. “You’re not a snob, are you, gorgeous?” he asks her, draping her over his shoulder, where she goes floppy and relaxed. “You’d like a name, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, you’ve done it now,” Lu Han says, turning back to him from the cupboard. “You’ll be her new favourite person. She loves shoulders.”

Baekhyun finds he can go hands-free now, with the cat on his shoulder. He flinches back a little in surprise when Lu Han steps right up to him, running his fingers over his hair.

“It’s all messed up from the drive,” he says, carefully rearranging the strands of Baekhyun’s hair, a focused look on his face. Being a little taller than Baekhyun, Baekhyun has a perfect view of his lips. They’re a delicate shade of pink and look incredibly soft, not even slightly chapped, slightly parted in concentration.

Baekhyun swallows and stands very still until Lu Han steps back, eyes a little hooded, unreadable for a moment as he gazes at Baekhyun.

“All fixed,” he says, and smiles, breaking the moment.

Baekhyun follows Lu Han further into his apartment, the nameless cat still draped over his shoulder. Lu Han shows him around. It’s a beautiful place, immaculately clean, spacious and modern, with two large bedrooms and a study as well as the big lounge-kitchen area. The floors are polished honey-coloured wood, probably perfect for sliding on. Baekhyun experimentally slips in his socks a little, and yes, it would be great for a sliding game. If it was Chanyeol he’d immediately challenge him to see who could slide the farthest, but this is Lu Han, who he wants to impress, so he stops himself before he can make himself look like he has the mental age of a five-year-old. There are French doors that lead out onto a balcony, and they go over to look at the view. The sun is setting over the city, making the whole room glow golden-orange as the summer haze refracts the light, the wide Han River below reflecting like glass. Lu Han’s layered blonde hair catches the sunset glow as he turns to smile at Baekhyun, the light falling across his face, and Baekhyun loses his breath, captivated.

He feels like he’s in a dream as he follows Lu Han back to the modern kitchen area. He wants to help Lu Han cook - he can’t really cook, but he can at least chop vegetables - but Lu Han just points him to sit down on a swivel bar stool at the marble counter dividing the kitchen space from the wide lounge area and refuses to listen to Baekhyun’s protests. He gives up without too much guilt, watching Lu Han tie the strings of an apron around his slim waist. The cat makes its escape over Baekhyun’s shoulder and jumps down to pad away somewhere.

“Cooking is one of my hobbies,” Lu Han says as he starts to gather his ingredients.

Baekhyun leans his elbows on the counter, watching Lu Han put together what looks like it’s going to be some kind of Chinese dish. He’s using a wok, and the bottles of oils and pastes he has out are all written in Chinese characters too, no hangul in sight. Maybe it’s something from his hometown. Baekhyun feels a warmth at the idea of Lu Han cooking a dish from his own childhood for Baekhyun. “What do you like about cooking?” he asks. “I can do basic stuff if I follow a recipe, but I have no creativity at all.”

“I like the process,” Lu Han says. “It’s kind of like surgery for me. If you put everything together in the right order, with the right amounts, you always get the right result. I like that it’s predictable, and that I’m in control every step of the way. I find it calming.”

Baekhyun nods. “I can see the similarities between that and cosmetic surgery,” he agrees. “Maybe not so much for emergency surgery, though. Minseok - he’s the chief of our ED - is always dealing with the most crazy situations thrown at him out of the blue. I covered the ED one shift over Christmas and had a case of angioedema, and it nearly gave me a heart attack trying to deal with it. It was just me and a first-year neurosurgery resident, it was a total nightmare.”

Lu Han laughs, tossing the vegetables in the wok. “That’s one of the main reasons I chose to specialise in cosmetic surgery,” he says. “I really admire emergency specialists. I know I couldn’t handle it for long.”

Cosmetic surgery certainly pays well, too, Baekhyun thinks, admiring the beautiful apartment around him again, and thinking of the cars. He’s not sure if this is all from Lu Han’s salary as a private cosmetic surgeon. It’s a lucrative profession for sure, but Lu Han is only a couple of years older than Baekhyun, who has only recently paid off his massive student debt. Lu Han gives the impression of being extremely comfortable in these surroundings, which makes Baekhyun wonder if his family are wealthy too. It seems rude to ask, though. Instead he swings his legs on the bar stool and watches Lu Han expertly put together the meal. 

They discuss surgical techniques all the way through dinner, which is delicious and not at all ruined for either of them by the grisly topic of conversation. The sun sets and the sky grows dark outside, the lights in the apartment seeming to glow brighter in comparison. The cat makes her return and winds her way around Lu Han’s feet, begging for her own dinner. Lu Han collects their empty dishes from the table and carries them into the kitchen, dodging the cat’s attempts to trip him up expertly. Baekhyun giggles as Lu Han curses long and fluently at the cat, the irritation of the words doing nothing to hide the affection in his tone.

“Do you like wine, Baekhyun?” Lu Han asks when he’s poured pet food for the cat and put the bowl down in a small nook in the hallway where he prefers her to eat it. 

“Well, yes,” Baekhyun says, a little embarrassed, “but I have to warn you I’m a total lightweight.”

Lu Han laughs. “Okay, no problem. We’ll just have a glass.”

Even one glass is probably going to make Baekhyun ridiculously tipsy, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to drive.

“The glasses are in the cupboard up there,” Lu Han nods at it. “I’ll go get a bottle from the cooler.” He leaves Baekhyun in the kitchen to go get it. Baekhyun opens the dishwasher and puts their plates and cutlery inside with the rest of the dishes used earlier, then reaches up to open the cupboard Lu Han indicated. He stands on tip-toe to get the stemmed glasses down, one in each hand, and looks at them. They're heavier than they look, catching the overhead light and sparkling, and even though Baekhyun knows nothing about glassware, he guesses this is expensive crystal. He turns around, a glass in each hand, to carry them over to the table.

There’s a strange, faint click all around him, and Baekhyun is plunged into darkness.

Baekhyun goes completely still. His heart stops beating. His lungs stop breathing. His muscles lock tight as a wave of terror washes through him, so powerful that he thinks it’s going to wash him away on it, wash him right out of himself and into oblivion. 

The crystal glasses slip from suddenly numb fingers and fall to the floor, where they shatter, ear-splittingly loud, around his feet.

“No,” he says faintly. Terror is seizing every part of his body, his mind, locking him tight. His heart starts up again, pounding like a jackhammer inside his chest. It’s dark. He cannot see. “No. No.”

“Fucking fuck,” someone curses. They sound very distant. “Damn it, cat, will you stop - Baekhyun, where are you? Are you okay? I heard something shatter -”

“It’s dark,” Baekhyun whimpers. He can hear Lu Han, but he can’t see him. He can only see darkness, and he can’t hear the voices, the hissing, but they must be coming, they must be soon. He gives a tiny sob, breath catching in his throat, as his whole body starts to shake. “I can’t see, I can’t....please, not again...please…”

“Baekhyun?” 

There’s a light. Baekhyun’s eyes, stretched wide and staring, turn to it. He sees Lu Han, faintly illumined in the bright white beam of a phone torch light. Lu Han shines the beam on Baekhyun’s face, and he would usually squint at the sudden dazzle, but his eyes are locked wide, staring with uncomprehending desperation at the light, afterimages crawling in bright floating bursts around his retinas. He’s lost, he doesn’t know what’s going on, and waves of panic are tearing through him, making him feel floaty, and he’s so, so dizzy.

“Shit,” Lu Han says, shining the beam on the sea of glass surrounding Baekhyun. “I’ll go get you some shoes -”

“No!” Baekhyun cries, high and shaking with panic. “Don’t go!” He takes a step forward, just as Lu Han shouts, “Stop!” There’s a sharp sting in the sole of his foot, and his sock goes warm and wet.

“Don’t move,” Lu Han says urgently. “Baekhyun, do not move a single muscle, do you hear me? You’re surrounded by glass.”

Baekhyun is crying, tears pouring down his cheeks. “It’s dark,” he gasps. He’s so dizzy. He wants to sit down, but there’s glass, and Lu Han told him not to move.

“It’s a power cut,” Lu Han says. “It’s just a power cut, Baekhyun. Fuck, you’re crying. What’s wrong? Do you have a phobia of the dark or something?”

Baekhyun can’t reply. It’s all he can do to stand upright and not fall down onto the broken glass he’s surrounded by. A power cut, he tries to tell himself. It’s just a power cut, it’s dark for Lu Han too, it’s not just him. He’s not having an episode. He’s not, he’s not...but it’s so dark, the dark is everywhere, pushing over him, trying to push its way into him, and he’s so, so scared.

“I have to get shoes,” Lu Han says. “I’m going to get shoes real quick so I can get you out of this glass, okay? I’m going to leave the phone right here so there’s still light.” He puts his phone on the bench, torch beam pointing up at the ceiling, and runs down the hall towards the door. Baekhyun sobs, tears dripping down his face as he’s left on his own in the dark. He crouches down into a squat, hugging his knees. He can feel his left foot bleeding from the glass he’s stepped on, his sock growing wetter and wetter, but he’s too scared to care. “Too dark,” he whimpers. “Too dark, too dark, too dark…”

There’s a loud crunching noise. Luhan is stepping towards him, walking on the broken glass with his feet shoved into hard-soled dress shoes, the laces left untied. He crouches down in front of Baekhyun, half-lit by the torch beam still on the bench, and puts his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders. 

“I’m going to carry you out of all this,” he tells him. “Can you stand up?”

Baekhyun nods, letting Lu Han grip his shoulders and help him stand up again. Once they’re both standing, Lu Han gets Baekhyun’s arm over his shoulder and lifts him right off the floor, one hand around his back and the other under his knees, as if he barely weighs anything. He carries Baekhyun back across the crunching glass-covered kitchen floor. Baekhyun clings to him, both arms around his neck. He knows now he’s not having an episode, which was his initial terror, but the dark is so all-encompassing, and it’s just so similar to his worst episodes that the fear is uncontrollable. He hadn’t even known he was scared of the dark now, because he’s never slept in the dark since he’s been living at Chanyeol’s, always with the warm glow of the beside light on, probably subconsciously keeping his fears at bay. 

Lu Han bends down to put him down on the couch and tries to stand back up. Baekhyun hangs on desperately, unwilling to let go of his neck.

“No!” he cries. “Don’t leave me alone!”

Lu Han crouches again, putting his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders and looking directly into his eyes. “I’m going to get the light,” he says firmly. “I want to make it lighter here so it won’t be so scary for you. I’ll be right back.”

Baekhyun trembles as Lu Han gently but firmly unwinds his arms from around his neck and stands up. He hugs himself tightly, watching Lu Han’s silhouette move quickly to the kitchen, where he picks up his phone again, then takes a glass tumbler and goes to the sink. He fills it with water, then comes back over to the couch. Baekhyun vaguely expects Lu Han to make him drink the water, but instead Lu Han places his phone down on the coffee table and then puts the glass of water on top of the torch light. The torch beams diffuse through the water, creating a makeshift lamp that throws dim light around the room. It’s not exactly bright, but it’s much, much better than all-encompassing dark. Baekhyun can see the shapes of everything clearly now, and he can see Lu Han as he kneels back down in front of Baekhyun.

“Where’s your phone?” Lu Han asks.

“M-my pocket,” Baekhyun manages. Lu Han finds Baekhyun’s phone in the pocket of his jeans. 

“Unlock it,” he says.

Baekhyun presses a shaking finger to the sensor, unlocking the phone, and Lu Han immediately finds the torch app. He shines the light on Baekhyun’s feet.

“Your left foot is bleeding quite a lot,” he says. “I don’t think your right foot is.”

“No, i-it’s just my left,” Baekhyun whispers. “I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to move, I just…”

“It’s okay,” Lu Han says. “Wait here just a moment, I’ve got a first aid kit in the bathroom.”

Baekhyun is left alone again, for less than a minute, but it seems like eternity in the dimly lit room. He sits still, whole body still shaking, but he’s getting calmer now, and with the advance of the calm comes the first creeping hints of shame. He huddles in on himself, feeling faintly sick.

“Hey,” Lu Han says gently, somehow back in front of him without Baekhyun noticing. He waits until Baekhyun’s eyes focus on his before he speaks again. “I’m going to check if there’s any glass in your foot and stop the bleeding, then we’ll see if we need to go to the after-hours clinic or the ED.”

Baekhyun nods, lets Lu Han manhandle him until he’s lying with his head on a couple of cushions, foot in Lu Han’s lap as he sits on the couch. Lu Han peels his bloody sock off and quickly replaces it with a towel pressed against Baekhyun’s foot.

“I’m so sorry,” Baekhyun says faintly. “I broke your nice wine glasses...and I probably got blood everywhere…”

“Glasses can be replaced,” Lu Han says reassuringly. “Blood washes out. I don’t mind, Baekhyun. I know you didn’t mean to.”

Baekhyun watches him, blonde head reflecting white in the white light of the makeshift lamp, face focused as he bends over Baekhyun’s foot in his lap. He wonders if this is what Lu Han looks like in surgery, that calm, intense focus. He uses Baekhyun’s phone torch to examine the cut.

“I don’t see any glass in here,” he says, “and the cut isn’t too bad, it just bled a lot. I think we won’t have to go to after-hours.”

“That’s good,” Baekhyun says, relieved that he’s not going to be any more trouble than he already has been. He also knows that getting stitches in the sole of his foot would be very unpleasant. Emergency staff often don’t even bother with local anaesthetic for this kind of thing, because getting the injection in the sole of the foot to administer the lidocaine often hurts just as much as getting the stitches themselves.

Lu Han puts a gauze pad over the cut and wraps his foot firmly in a bandage. When it’s all tied off, Lu Han helps him to sit upright, and finally, finally pulls Baekhyun in his arms. Baekhyun presses into him with a shaky sigh, closing his eyes as the physical contact chases away the skittering terror crawling around his edges.

“So,” Lu Han says, stroking Baekhyun’s hair. “Not so good with the dark, huh?”

Baekhyun nods. “I guess not,” he says, for a moment actually glad that it’s dark now, because Lu Han can’t see the way his cheeks are burning with shame. “It didn’t use to be a problem, but...well, you know how I was away from work, when you were filling in for me?”

“I was told you were ill,” Lu Han says, sounding, for the first time ever since Baekhyun has met him, a little uncertain.

“I was,” Baekhyun says. “I developed severe depression after my ex broke up with me. It was very sudden, very shocking. I had no idea she was going to...she actually did it when I proposed to her, so I really...I really didn’t see it coming.” He swallows. “I knew I was depressed, but I didn’t realise it was getting so bad. I just kept on slipping, and I couldn’t see out of it enough to realise I needed help. Eventually I had a couple of episodes of affective psychosis. My hallucinations were always that it was dark, completely dark, and I couldn’t see. I’d hear voices in the dark whispering awful things to me, feel these….things coming for me, brushing against my skin...” He shudders, and feels Lu Han hold him a little tighter. “I’m better now, I don’t get them any more, but I guess the suddenness of the power cut...it scared the shit out of me. I thought I was having another episode, and they’re the most terrifying things that have ever happened to me.”

“I can understand that,” Lu Han says. “Thank you for explaining it to me. I’m really sorry you had to go through such a horrible thing.”

“It feels so stupid, being scared of the dark,” Baekhyun whispers. “Like I’m a little kid. It’s so irrational.”

“Hey,” Lu Han says. There’s a smile in his voice. “Want to know something? I’m afraid of heights.”

“Oh, yeah,” Baekhyun says. “You told me in the ambulance.”

“Did I?” He feels Lu Han’s body shake as he laughs. “I must have been pretty out of it. I don’t even remember telling you. But yeah, I am really, really scared of heights. You know what’s stupid? I can’t even go out on my own balcony. I’ve literally never stepped out of those French doors in the three years I’ve lived in this apartment.”

Baekhyun finds himself giving a tiny giggle. “Why on earth did you buy an apartment on the eighteenth floor?”

Lu Han groans. “I told myself I was facing my fears. Exposure therapy and all that. You have no idea how long it took me to be able to even keep the blinds open. I had to crawl up to the windows every time I wanted to open or close them, I couldn’t even stand.” They’re both laughing now, still holding each other in the dark. “Honestly, it was one of the most fucking stupid ideas I’ve ever had, but I’m finally used to the windows now, and I don’t need a balcony anyway. But anyway, what I’m saying is, you’re in good company here with the phobias.”

“Great minds...have great phobias?” Baekhyun asks, which makes Lu Han snort and ruffle his hair. 

At that moment the lights go on, blazing against their dark-accustomed eyes, and they both squint, Baekhyun giving a gasp of relief as the last of the shadows are chased away. He sits up, pulling away from Lu Han to survey the damage he’s done to his beautiful apartment.

“Oh no, I’ve dripped blood everywhere,” he says, horrified at the red trail leading from the kitchen to the couch. “I am so, so sorry -”

“It’s no problem,” Lu Han tells him. “It’s a wooden floor, it’ll clean easily enough.”

“I’ll clean it now,” Baekhyun says, starting to stand up. “Where do you keep your -”

Lu Han catches his wrist and pulls him straight back down. “No,” he says, more firmly. “Leave it. I’ll get it later.”

They’re so close together now, Lu Han’s strong, slim fingers possessive as they wrap around Baekhyun’s wrist. Baekhyun goes still, enraptured by the way Lu Han looks at him. The way Lu Han commands him. Baekhyun feels like he would do anything, if Lu Han will just look at him and command him like this. 

“God, you’re so fucking gorgeous I don’t know what to do with you,” Lu Han says. His voice has gone low, molten, like it had in the car that time, the way that makes thrills creep all the way up and down Baekhyun’s spine and his arms and legs too, rushing together and combining to make a shivering heat low in his belly. 

“....oh,” Baekhyun says. The sound comes out helpless, and bubbling laughter chases behind it with equally little control, and helpless is how Baekhyun feels. He’s on the edge of a cliff, and he’ll never catch his balance with Lu Han looking at him, into him, like this. There’s nothing he can do but fall.

Lu Han licks his lips, and Baekhyun is speechless, free falling, the world whipping around him and the only thing stable in it is Lu Han.

“It’s okay, right?” Lu Han murmurs. “If I want to kiss you, Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun can’t speak, so he doesn’t bother trying. He tilts his head just a little, and lifts up to slant his mouth against Lu Han’s.

The noise Lu Han makes as their lips press together is small and desperate, and Baekhyun’s hand comes up to comb through Lu Han’s hair at it. His kisses at the perfect corner of his mouth and at the bow of his upper lip as he tests the way they fit together. He’s shaking a little, but nothing in Lu Han speaks of tentativeness as he kisses Baekhyun back, returning each little peck with one of his own. They’re catching each other off-centre every time, and Baekhyun giggles again. He wraps his arms around Lu Han’s neck and falls backward, and Lu Han comes down with him, pressing on top of him like the heat of summer. Lu Han doesn’t seem to mind Baekhyun’s stupid giggles as he eases impossibly closer, his left hand carefully dragging up Baekhyun’s chest until his warm palm slips inside Baekhyun’s collar and spreads along his collarbone. Then he sucks Baekhyun’s upper lip into his mouth, teeth scraping, and Baekhyun closes his eyes, bringing his free hand up to curve around Lu Han’s jaw, aligning their mouths so he can kiss him again. The kisses get gradually longer and more intense, until Lu Han’s tongue is testing the seam of his lips.

Baekhyun has never had the other person take the lead with kissing before, and it puts him in a space he doesn’t understand, limp and pliant and absolutely coming apart at the seams, but in a way that is so exquisitely perfect he cannot do anything but let it happen. Lu Han’s tongue pushes harder, so Baekhyun opens his mouth for him, and Lu Han’s tongue slips in to learn his own. A moan slips out as Lu Han’s tongue strokes the roof of his mouth, and Lu Han pulls back, so Baekhyun opens hazy eyes to see him looking down on Baekhyun like he’s awed, with flushed lips and pupils blown.

“Do that again,” Lu Han murmurs, and Baekhyun, panting, just blinks up at him.

“What?”

“Make that noise again,” Lu Han clarifies, and the register of his voice is one Baekhyun has never heard before.

Baekhyun shivers. “You are demanding, aren’t -” he starts to say, but Lu Han is kissing him again, swallowing the words and licking his way back into Baekhyun’s mouth, relentless, until Baekhyun moans again, the sound dragged out by the way Lu Han’s fingertips brush at his throat.

It’s an all-consuming thing that makes Baekhyun lose track of time. Lu Han’s weight atop him is reassuring and solid and warm. They kiss and kiss and kiss until Baekhyun can’t feel his lips, until his jaw is sore and everything else has faded into the background and nothing else exists but this.

\---

It’s 1:30 pm on a hot, summery Saturday, and the ED has been fairly quiet so far. Minseok has documentation and emails and meeting requests waiting for him in his office, as he always does, but he really doesn’t feel like staring at his computer screen right now. There aren’t any major emergencies going on in the ED at the moment, but he’s just spotted Jongdae disappearing down one of the corridors towards a consultation room, though Jongdae hadn’t noticed him. One of his residents must have called an obstetric consult. With any luck it won’t take Jongdae long to deal with it, and then Minseok can grab him and get lunch together before the afternoon rush begins. He remembers how worried Jongdae had been when he’d come to ask him about the responsibilities of being chief of department, and he wants to find out how his friend is doing after deciding to decline his promotion.

With that in mind, Minseok takes the next chart out of the rack, smiling apologetically at Aecha when she gives him a meaning look, obviously aware he hasn’t taken a lunch break yet.

“Just one, before lunch,” he says, hugging the chart to his chest. “It’ll only take 15 minutes, I promise.”

“You haven’t even looked at the chart,” Aecha points out dryly. Minseok looks at the chart, flicking his eyes over the patient’s chief complaint. 

“Sprained ankle, most likely,” he says. “It’ll really be quick. If Dr. Kim comes out before I finish, send him to me?”

“Okay,” Aecha says. “Room 9 is free.”

Minseok goes out into the waiting room and finds the teenager with the probably sprained ankle, a soccer player in dusty uniform sitting with an older man who is probably his father. Minseok asks if they’d like a wheelchair, and the teenager flushes scarlet and shakes his head.

“I’ll just hop,” he says as they stand up, so Minseok leads them towards room 9, the teenager’s arm over his father’s shoulders as he hop-limps his way through. 

It’s a pretty clear case of a sprain, as Minseok had expected, and he doesn’t need to get X-rays. He wraps the ankle and gives the boy a loan of a pair of crutches, to be returned to the hospital on follow up, a prescription for painkillers and a patient information sheet on how to care for and exercise the sprained ankle. Just as he’s sent them away and is updating the patient journal, Jongdae sticks his head in the door.

“Heard you wanted me?”

“Oh, hey,” Minseok looks up and smiles. “If you’ve not eaten, want to get lunch?”

Jongdae laughs. “Is that all? I thought it was something more dramatic,” he says. “Sure, I’d love to.”

“I’ll be finished with this in half a minute,” Minseok says. “Nothing major with your consult, I take it?”

Jongdae leans against the wall just inside the door as he waits for Minseok to finish typing. “Yeah, just false labour,” he says. “First-time mother so she was freaking out a little.”

Minseok hums, quickly typing in the last fields and closing out of the system. “Okay,” he says, standing up. They leave the consultation room, but don’t get more than three steps down the hall towards the exit before Aecha hurries up.

“Sorry, Dr. Kim,” she says, “but we’ve got an emergency on route, ETA five minutes. Nine-year-old boy pulled out of the river. We’re going to need you.”

“A drowning?” Minseok asks, heart sinking as he hurries to follow her out. He’s aware of Jongdae trailing him as they make their way to the first trauma bay, where Minseok can see the nurses already setting up for a paediatric resuscitation, but he’s too caught up in the necessity to get all the information possible about the emergency to spare a thought to wonder why. Aecha confirms that it’s a drowning case, relaying the information the paramedics had given her over the radio. The boy had been playing with his friends at the Yongdap-dong end of the Cheonggyecheon stream, where it widens out and deepens as it feeds into the Han River. He’d fallen in and not come back up. The boy’s friend had a cellphone and called 119. The paramedics had arrived promptly and with the friend’s help managed to find the boy and drag him out of the water, and had started immediate CPR.

Minseok casts an experienced eye over the preparations. He assigns one nurse to start on chest compressions, rotating with the other nurses who are pulling medications into syringes, setting up IVs and getting the EKG monitor ready. The respiratory therapist arrives and gets ready at the head of the bed to manage the child’s breathing. 

All through it, Minseok is fighting the quivering apprehension trying to rise up in him. His walls are so broken down these days. He used to be able to block everything out without much trouble at all, but he’s been struggling to maintain his professionalism recently. He knows it’s because of the process of recovering from his PTSD, but it doesn’t make it any easier to handle. His emotions are just too close to the surface, and this case is going to be particularly hard on him, because it’s a child who is not breathing. 

He briefly considers backing out, making Dr. Min leave the diabetic ketoacidosis patient he’s treating and swap with him. The resident could handle the drowning, but it’s not good practice to change doctors mid-treatment unless absolutely necessary, and besides, Minseok needs to learn how to deal with this. He can’t avoid it. This is his job, and he wants to do it, and do it well. Backing out when it gets hard isn’t going to help him at all.

“Hey, Minseok,” Jongdae says beside him. Minseok is pulled out of his worries. He turns to glance at his friend, vaguely surprised that Jongdae is still here.

“You go ahead,” he says. “Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to join you after all -”

Jongdae is shaking his head, holding up a hand to cut him off. “No, I was actually wondering if you wanted any help,” he says. “I can hang around if I’d be of any use.”

Relief floods Minseok like a wave, making his muscles go momentarily limp. “I’d love a hand, if you wouldn’t mind,” he says. Having another doctor around for this will be hugely helpful, especially one like Jongdae who he knows and trusts implicitly. It’s not that he’s not confident in his medical and practical knowledge, but it’s a difficult clinical situation at the best of times, even without the emotional baggage Minseok carries around this type of case. “Are you familiar with the paediatric resuscitation algorithm?”

Jongdae says he is, and at that moment they hear the approaching siren. The ambulance pulls up at the doors and the EMTs do their swift, practiced dance of movement, transfer, and getting CPR taken over by the assigned nurse with as little break in the chest compressions as possible. One of the EMTs hands Minseok the filled-in run sheet, giving him a rapid verbal history as Minseok scans the numbers. The story of the rescue is just like Aecha had told him. What stands out from the rest of the information for Minseok are two numbers he reads on the sheet. The first is the time the 119 call had been placed. The second is the time the boy had finally been pulled from the water. The difference between them is 15 minutes.

“15 minutes between the 119 call and commencing CPR? He was underwater for 15 minutes?” Minseok double checks, and the EMT confirms that this is correct. 

That is not a good number. Minseok looks at the nine-year-old boy lying on the bed, already hooked up to the IVs. The nurses have cut off his wet t-shirt, dried his chest and applied the EKG pads. The respiratory tech has gotten an endotracheal tube down his throat. Like the four-year-old earlier that year, he is limp, unresponsive, making no attempt to breathe, pupils fixed and dilated. He has no pulse, and the tracing of his heart rhythm on the EKG monitor is a straight flat line. 

This child is dead, Minseok thinks, and has to bite the inside of his lip hard to maintain his composure. He can’t let it get to him, not now. He has to find the balance between blocking everything out completely and having a breakdown. He has a job to do.

Jongdae is observing the proceedings, outwardly, at least, appearing calm. Minseok wonders briefly if he thinks of his own children in times like these. 

They both look at the asystolic flatline on the monitor.

“Looks like it might be fine v-fib to me,” Minseok says, very quietly. He’s getting deja vu, the memory of the drowned little boy who had died back in February mixing with the memory of the flashback he’d had of Ilsung at that time. He looks away from the monitor, forcing himself to meet Jongdae’s eyes. He feels like he’s pleading with his friend, knowing that what he’s saying doesn’t even make medical sense, but it’s what he always does with children who have died from oxygen deprivation, and he needs to do it now too. “What do you think?”

Jongdae looks back at him for a long moment. There’s both compassion and understanding in his gaze. “Worth a shot,” he says.

So Minseok, Jongdae, the nurses, and the respiratory therapist all begin the battle against death that they know they have no hope of winning.

Working on the almost infinitesimal chance that the unshockable asystolic rhythm on the EKG monitor is actually a shockable ventricular fibrillation so fine they can’t detect it, for the next 20 minutes they continue CPR. Check the endotracheal tube, check the pulses, check the tracing, shock, IV adrenaline every second cycle, amiodarone every third cycle, and so around and around it goes. Minseok is aware of Jongdae being everywhere, making sure Minseok doesn’t screw up the voltages or drugs, his mere presence an assurance in the clinically and emotionally difficult situation. He’s also alternating with the nurses on chest compressions and helping the respiratory therapist manage the tube in the boy’s windpipe. Minseok could almost cry with gratitude for Jongdae. He doesn’t have to be here, this isn’t his responsibility at all, but he’s doing it anyway for Minseok’s sake, working voluntarily in a situation that no doctor would ever want to be in. 

Because Jongdae is here, after about ten minutes Minseok can leave the resuscitation room and go out to the family room, where the mother is sitting with other family members, and tell her how things are going. Minseok is not optimistic. His job right now is to help the boy’s mother with her expectations so that in a few minutes when he will most likely have to tell her that her son is dead, the news will not be completely unexpected, and the family and friends with her will be prepared to help her. He talks to her for a few minutes, then goes back to the resuscitation.

As a procedure, the resuscitation is going smoothly. The boy is being well ventilated via the endotracheal tube. People are trading off chest compressions at regular intervals. The drugs are being given on time and followed by another shock. But there’s no sign that they’re accomplishing anything at all. The tracing on the monitor shows absolutely no change from a flat, straight line. The boy still has no pulse. There’s nothing left for them to do.

Minseok looks at Jongdae, and in the meeting of their eyes is the knowledge that it’s time to quit.

Jongdae glances over at the EKG monitor automatically, the flicker of a glance that is so trained in it’s like looking in a car rearview mirror while driving. His eyes widen, and Minseok instantly looks at the monitor too in response. He sees a sudden, quick, upright wave on the monitor, an electrical impulse in the flat line. A heartbeat. Just one, single, heartbeat. 

“Oh my God,” Jongdae says.

Minseok knows this doesn’t mean the boy had really been in fine ventricular fibrillation and they have just succeeded in shocking him out of it. That would have led to a regular succession of impulses, but there is just one, which smoothly slides off the screen as the tracing progresses. Nothing further happens. Minseok turns to Jongdae, who is still staring at the screen like he’s never seen anything like it before. To be fair, he probably hasn’t. Neither has Minseok. 

“That was just a terminal rhythm, right?” he asks Jongdae slowly. By this he means the occasional random contraction of a dead heart, almost unheard of in a heart that has been inactive for this long, but not as unlikely as an actual heartbeat. Jongdae doesn’t reply. He just watches the screen. And suddenly, there’s another. 

Minseok probably looks as stunned as Jongdae does right now. This does not happen. The kid is in asystole. No matter how much Minseok tried to tell himself it might be fine v-fib, no matter how nice Jongdae and the resuscitation staff are being about it, he knows the kid is in asystole. It’s not that the defibrillation worked, because that would have led to the immediate return of a proper, regular rhythmic pulse. But there have now been two electrical impulses in this boy’s heart.

“Did he have a pulse with that?” Minseok asks the nurse who is monitoring the brachial pulse. The nurse shakes his head.

“Well, I guess we better keep on going,” Minseok says, barely believing the words coming out of his own mouth.

So they keep on going. For another twenty minutes, they do compressions, shocks, and give the IV drugs, watching as the number of impulses on the screen gradually increase, until they’re occurring 80 or 90 times a minute. Which is a normal heart rate. And then the nurse looks up at Minseok and says, “I have a pulse.”

Which is when Minseok thinks, what have I done?

But he knows what he has done, and he feels suddenly nauseous, saliva pooling in his mouth like he needs to throw up.

It’s clear to everyone on this small resuscitation team by now that by some inexplicable, astronomical chance, they have somehow first gotten the boy’s heart restarted, and then it had been undamaged enough to get back a regular heartbeat, and finally it is beating strongly enough to pump blood through his body. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only his heart that was starved of oxygen. His brain has been as well, and brains are far more easily damaged by a lack of blood flow than hearts.

When Minseok was a junior resident, he did a stint in the specialized neurological ICU over at SNU Hospital. He’d worked with two adult patients who had drowned as children and then been resuscitated. Their deficits had been profound. Unable to talk, walk, or feed themselves. Unable to even reliably demonstrate their ability to think. They’d lived because their parents spent most of their waking hours and the rest of their lives caring for them. Minseok has just resuscitated a child who has been underwater for at least 15 minutes, if not longer, and whose heart had stopped for over half an hour. Has he just condemned this boy to a life as little more than a vegetable, and his parents to a lifetime of full-time caring for a profoundly brain-damaged child?

Almost at once, there’s evidence that he has. The boy begins having seizures. He has four over the next 20 minutes. His body tenses, his extremities jerk, his teeth clench around the ET tube. Each seizure lasts a minute or so, after which he lapses once more into unresponsiveness. They give him anti-seizure medications intravenously, lorazepam and then phenobarbitol. Finally the seizures stop, but the boy remains unresponsive. Then, right after the last dose of anticonvulsants, a couple of intensive care staff arrive to take him upstairs to the paediatric ICU. It’s been an hour now since the boy came through the doors of the ED.

Minseok forces himself to give a coherent rundown of the events leading them to this point to the ICU staff. Jongdae is standing next to him, so close their elbows are brushing. Minseok barely even sees the faces of the ICU staff, just forcing himself to get the words out in an approximation of his normal calm efficiency. When they’re gone, he turns and thanks the nurses and the respiratory tech. They’ve been the ones that have done the care that Minseok and Jongdae have directed. 

“Minseok?” Jongdae asks him as soon as the nurses are turning to the tasks of cleaning, packing away and preparing the trauma bay for whichever new arrival will be here next. He takes Minseok’s arm and leads him aside. Minseok goes with him, far beyond any ability to resist. He doesn’t know what to think. He’d never considered getting this far. He’d never expected his obsession with “fine v-fib” in children without a heartbeat to actually work.

“Minseok, you’re really pale,” Jongdae says, pulling him right into the neighboring trauma bay, where the bed is empty and made up. He pulls Minseok down to sit on the edge of the bed and sits beside him. “Was it the case? The situation with the kid not breathing?”

Minseok nods, shivering, and wondering why Jongdae is asking this, because he doesn’t remember telling Jongdae about Ilsung, and though it’s not a secret he’s pretty sure Jongdae isn’t one of the few hospital staff who were there at the time and still remember. 

“I’m fine,” he says, as soon as he thinks he can speak without throwing up. “I’m okay. I have to go talk to the mother.”

“Give it five minutes,” Jongdae tells him. “If you go out there looking like this she’ll think he’s dead.”

“Jongdae, what did we just do?” Minseok asks. It comes out a little desperate.

Jongdae knows what he means. His arm goes a little tighter around Minseok. “We did everything we could,” he says. “It’s not up to us to decide the outcome. If the child is brain-damaged, it’s not our fault. If he doesn’t survive the night, or if he survives for years and years, that’s not for us to decide either. Our job was to save his life when we could, and we did that.”

Minseok breathes carefully, controlling his nausea. Jongdae is right, of course. Jongdae pulls him into a hug, and Minseok closes his eyes and lets himself be comforted. He hugs his girls when he sees them, of course, but it’s so different to being properly hugged by an adult, someone who understands. It’s so rare for Minseok. So precious. 

“I know about what happened to your son,” Jongdae says quietly. “Kyungsoo told me a while back, because he was worried about you. I just wanted to tell you that I’m here, if you ever need to talk, or not talk, or whatever you need.”

Minseok feels like he’s going to cry. He swallows hard, trying to get a grip. “Thanks,” he says, when he thinks he can trust his voice. “I’ve been working on it in therapy. My emotions are really close to the surface at the moment, but I’m getting better about it.”

“That’s good,” Jongdae says. “You don’t have to do this alone, Minseok. Your friends are with you.”

“I’m learning that,” Minseok whispers.

He breathes himself calm for a little while longer, then forces himself to pull back. He really has to go and talk to the boy’s mother. Jongdae looks at him carefully and gives him a small smile.

“That’s better. You don’t look on the verge of passing out any more,” he says. “Do you want me to come meet the mother with you?”

“No, it’s okay,” Minseok says. “I’ve kept you from your department long enough.”

They leave the trauma bay, Jongdae heading out of the ED towards the lifts and Minseok towards the family room, feeling a lot better despite the residual shakiness inside. Jongdae is such a good person, Minseok doesn’t even know how it’s possible.

He pulls himself together and tells the boy’s mother that, almost unbelievably, her son is alive and is heading up to the paediatric ICU. At the same time, he has to tell her that he might not be the same child. That he likely has had significant brain injury, and that he had almost certainly swallowed water, so that the chance of a lung infection is very real. The mother bows to him, thanks him, and goes to see her son. Minseok goes back to work. 

What he does for the rest of the day, he can’t even begin to recall. When his shift ends, he can’t bring himself to leave. He’s unbearably lonely once again, and home holds no comfort for him. He takes a break in his office, lying on his couch staring at the ceiling for an hour or so, before going back out and inserting himself into the flow of the emergency department at night. Aecha was on the day shift today so she’s not there to nag him, and the rest of the emergency staff are so used to him being there at all kinds of hours when he’s not officially on the roster that they don’t question it at all.

Minseok loses himself in his work. He’s aware that he’s not supposed to be doing this. This is a coping mechanism he’s not meant to fall back into any more, but he’s so tired, and he’s been fighting so hard recently. He’s exhausted by the ongoing battle of processing and working through his PTSD. Just this once, he tells himself. He’ll just do it this once, and he’ll tell Yifan about how he had to do it, and Yifan will help him put it in perspective and they can figure out what they need to do to help him next time, but right now, Minseok just needs to cope.

The next morning, before his next day’s shift starts, he showers in the staff changing rooms and changes into one of the fresh sets of scrubs he keeps at work for this exact reason. He rubs his hair dry with a towel and, finding he has half an hour before his shift starts, goes up to the PICU. He steps through the glass sliding doors and walks up to the main desk. 

The woman sitting at the desk looks up as he approaches. Their eyes meet, and she stands up to smile at him. She’s wearing a white coat over a blouse and jeans, and brown hair in a wispy bun falls down to frame a sweet, round-cheeked face. She must have been on the overnight shift, because the shift change is in half an hour, but she doesn’t show any signs of grumpy tiredness as she smiles at Minseok.

“Hi, Dr. Kim,” she says. Minseok runs his eyes quickly over her nametag. He’s seen this intensivist around a few times, but never really crossed paths with her apart from hectic exchanges in the ED where neither of them ever had time for polite greetings or introductions, or indeed anything more than shooting rapid-fire information at each other and then vanishing off to whatever urgent tasks were awaiting them. He recalls her name as he reads it; Lee Eunsook.

“Hello, Dr. Lee,” he greets her back, a faint smile of his own slipping out automatically in response to hers, despite the exhaustion weighing on him like a physical burden. “Do you know about the boy who was brought in yesterday? The drowning victim?”

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Lee says. “I was there in the ED for the transfer.” She laughs as Minseok gulps in embarrassment. He should have known that, he should have remembered her being there, but he’d just been so out of it. He starts to apologize, but she waves it off.

“It’s okay, I completely understand. You looked like you’d had a rough day.”

“That’s one way of saying it,” Minseok agrees, rubbing the back of his neck. “Which room is he in?”

Dr. Lee nods towards the room directly behind her. “That was his room, but he’s gone.”

Minseok had been half-expecting this, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. He blinks hard, several times, unable to figure out the emotions crawling through him. They’re such a mess that really the only thing he’s clear about is that he’s conflicted. “What time did he die?” he asks. It comes out as a croak.

Dr. Lee’s eyes go wide, forehead creasing with concern as she hurries around the desk to put a steadying hand on his arm. “No, he’s not dead,” she says. “He’s gone, discharged. He went home.”

Minseok stares at her, uncomprehending. “What?”

“He woke up about midnight,” Dr. Lee tells him. “He’s been walking, talking, eating, no signs of neurological deficit, no signs of pneumonia. His mom was here so we sent him home with her about an hour ago.”

Minseok needs to sit down. “Are you serious?” he asks. He must sound like a complete moron, but he just can’t believe it.

“Absolutely serious,” Dr. Lee tells him, smiling, though he sees worry in the set of her eyebrows. “You had a save, Dr. Kim.”

Minseok decides the best thing to do right now is to sit down before he actually falls down and causes some kind of dramatic scene. There are no chairs nearby, so he sits down right there on the floor in the ICU reception area and rests his back against the side of the desk. Eunsook crouches down beside him.

“I’m fine,” Minseok says before she can ask. He feels both dazed and extremely ridiculous, but standing up any longer just doesn’t feel within the realms of possibility.

To Minseok’s great relief, Eunsook doesn’t make a fuss over his unexpected action. Instead, she sits down beside him, right there on the clean acrylic floor in the quiet, empty PICU reception area. She leans back against the desk next to him and stretches denim-clad legs out beside his. Instead of thinking about what the hell he’s doing and why this whole situation is having such an effect on him, Minseok notices that their legs are the same length, his perhaps a tiny bit longer, and that they’re both wearing straight-legged jeans in the exact same shade of pale blue. Eunsook is wearing perfectly white Reebok tennis shoes, and a pair of bright orange socks with a pattern of brown cats peek out from in the small gap between the shoes and the hem of her jeans.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” Eunsook says conversationally beside him. “The night nurses couldn’t believe their eyes when he woke up. We can get pretty jaded here in the ICU sometimes, because our patients are so often terminal and unresponsive. Miracles like this make it all worthwhile.”

Minseok nods. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I was sure he’d die overnight or at least be profoundly brain-damaged.”

“Not a sign of it,” Eunsook tells him. “We got a neuro consult right away and they couldn’t believe it either, but it looks like he really is fine. It reminds me of a case study I once read from America…”

She starts to tell Minseok about the case study and the similarities between the two cases. Minseok senses her enthusiasm for her subject as she turns a little towards him to describe the details, just as if they were having a perfectly normal discussion in a meeting room or at a seminar, rather than sitting on the floor in the intensive care reception because Minseok has worked himself into such a state. The way she’s treating the situation so normally helps Minseok feel like the world is slotting back into place around him. He starts to respond to some of the details she tells him, and before long they’re talking about other miraculous cases too, documented events that defy all medical knowledge. A nurse passes them, hesitating as she looks down at the two doctors sitting on the floor against the reception desk. Eunsook just glances up with a smile and an “OK” gesture with her finger and thumb, and keeps on chatting. 

Slowly Minseok comes back to himself enough that he realises Eunsook is probably off-shift by now, and that he himself should be down in the ED.

“Dr. Lee, I’m keeping you at work,” he says apologetically. Eunsook grins at him and shakes her head, making the brown locks of hair that have fallen from her bun to frame her face dance. 

“It’s okay. Miraculous medical cases are one of my favourite things to talk about,” she says. “And call me Eunsook.”

Minseok can’t help smiling back. “Okay. I’m Minseok,” he says, and holds out his hand.

“Good to meet you, Minseok,” Eunsook says, her eyes going right up into bright crinkles as she takes his hand and shakes it, laughing. “I’ve never made polite introductions while sitting on the floor before.”

Minseok grimaces apologetically. “My bad. I was really overwhelmed. Thanks for not making a big deal of it.”

Eunsook pats his shoulder, completely naturally and without hesitation. “Think you’re good to get up now?”

“Yeah. I better get down to the ED, I’m supposed to be on shift,” he says.

“Really?” Eunsook pushes her hands on the knees of her jeans to stand up, then offers him a hand, hauling him up easily when Minseok takes it. They’re almost the same height, like Minseok had expected from comparing the length of their legs before. “I assumed you’d been on the night shift. You look exhausted.”

Minseok ducks his head, embarrassed. “I did work the night, actually,” he says, “but I shouldn’t have. I have a bad habit of overworking when I don’t want to process things. I’m trying to break it, but this case wasn’t a good one for me, and I kind of slipped back into the old coping mechanism.”

Eunsook’s eyes soften in understanding. “I get it,” she says. “I used to do the same after my divorce. But do you mean you haven’t slept tonight? You’re going into another full day on no sleep?”

Processing the fact that Eunsook, like him, is divorced, Minseok nods. “It’s not quite a full day though. I’m getting off at 3, because my daughters’ school production is on at 4.” He sighs. “I really shouldn’t have worked through the night. I wanted to be able to give it my full attention.”

“My nephew’s production is this afternoon as well,” Eunsook says. “What school?”

Minseok tells her, and Eunsook’s eyes go round. “No way,” she laughs. “It’s the same school. My nephew is in year six. He’s playing Captain Hook.”

“My oldest daughter is in year six too,” Minseok says. “She’s one of his pirates. My younger daughter is playing John.”

“I suppose you’re going with your wife?” Eunsook asks. 

Minseok shakes his head. “No. I’m divorced too, actually.” He’s never admitted it so easily, with no residual twinge of guilt and shame. Perhaps it’s because Eunsook is divorced too, or perhaps it’s because she’s just so friendly and easy to talk to, no trace of judgement in her manner despite Minseok’s unusual behaviour. “My wife will be with her partner. I’m going alone.”

“Let’s go together, then,” Eunsook suggests, smiling at him with what looks like hope in her eyes. “I’ll poke you if it looks like you’re going to drop off.”

Minseok laughs. “That sounds great,” he says. “I’d appreciate the company, too.”

They arrange to meet outside the school foyer before the production starts, and Eunsook grabs her things and comes down with him to the ground floor. They part at the doors of the ED, Eunsook waving as she gives him another of the smiles that crease her eyes into crescents, and Minseok feels something kindle to life unexpectedly inside him. He watches her go, strangely reluctant to tear his eyes away as she crosses the foyer, until the outside doors slide closed behind her.

When he walks into the emergency department, he finds Aecha behind the desk again. She’s got a couple of med students who she’s assigning to shadow Dr. Min. Minseok tries to slide past without her noticing him, but Aecha has eagle eyes, and she fixes him with a warning stare that Minseok knows better than to try and wriggle away from. He may be the chief of the department, but Aecha has been working here for more than twice as long as he has, and has been the head nurse for eight years. She’s always kind, but can be very firm, and Minseok suddenly feels like a child who’s been caught misbehaving as she sends Dr. Min away with his two shadows and comes over to look up at him with an expression that’s half concerned, half exasperated.

“I heard you worked overnight, young man,” she says severely. The reprimand in her tone is partially joking, he can hear it, but he also knows that she’s serious beneath it. He finds his head lowering a little in chagrin, and her eyes immediately soften. She takes him aside, lowering her voice a little. “I thought we were getting better with this lately,” she says gently.

“I am,” Minseok says guiltily. “I just…” he trails off. He’s exhausted and he doesn’t feel like he can adequately explain himself, even though he knows she’s only doing this out of concern for him. Aecha sighs. 

“You look awful,” she says bluntly. “When did you last eat?”

Minseok thinks about it. He definitely hadn’t had dinner, and now he realises that he’d never had lunch after his plans with Jongdae had fallen through due to the emergency drowning case. “Breakfast...yesterday,” he admits, shamefaced. Geez, no wonder he feels like crap. He’s such an idiot.

Aecha groans. “Okay. I want you to go straight to the cafeteria and get some food. I know -” she holds up a hand before he can protest. “You’re rostered on the floor for the morning, but it’s quiet, we can manage without you. I’m in charge of the floor, and I don’t want anyone who looks as wrecked as you scaring the patients. Then you’re going to go into your office where I happen to know you keep bedding and take a nap. I will page you if there’s anything we can’t handle without you.”

Minseok nods, helpless in the face of her resolve. He feels so stupid, but his head is aching with tiredness and now that he’s realised how long it’s been since he’s eaten, he understands the shaky feeling in his arms and legs. This is exactly why he needs to fix this, he realises. Because he gave in to his coping mechanism yesterday, he’s now putting more pressure on the residents and nurses because he needs to eat and sleep when he should be working. 

“Sorry,” he says. It comes out a little wobbly, and Aecha pats his arm.

“I know you’ve been trying hard lately,” she says quietly. “It’s been wonderful to see you looking so much better in the last couple of months. I’d hate to see you slip back into those old habits.”

“I know,” Minseok says. It’s almost a whisper, he’s so tired. “I appreciate you looking out for me. I’ll eat and take a nap. You’ll page me if anything happens?”

Aecha assures him she will, so Minseok obeys her. He’s so tired that he’s not really hungry, but he forces himself to swallow a bowl of soup and bread, and he does actually feel much better afterwards. He knows Aecha won’t let him work until he’s at least had a power nap, though, so he obediently goes to his office, gets out his neatly folded blanket and pillow from the cupboard where he keeps them, and kicks off his shoes to lie on the couch, the pager within reach on the coffee table. The background noise of the ED filters through his closed door, and he falls asleep only seconds after closing his eyes.

He wakes up to a knock on his door. Rubbing his eyes, he sits up, glancing at his wall clock to find that it’s midday. He’s had three hours sleep. He feels wrecked, but he knows it’s from waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle. Three hours is better than none, and coffee will help.

“Come in,” he says, pushing the blanket aside and standing up. The door opens and Aecha looks in.

“I didn’t page because it’s not urgent,” she says, “but it’s getting pretty busy out here now and we could use a hand. How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” Minseok says. It’s not a complete lie. He does feel better than he had that morning. “I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.” 

He quickly folds up his blanket and puts it away, then brushes his hair and teeth in his tiny attached bathroom before shrugging his coat on over his scrubs and heading out into the rush.

Three hours later, his shift is over. Minseok feels slightly dazed as he heads back to his office, where he has street clothes to change into for the play. He’s been inside the hospital for so long that he feels almost unreal. He needs to feel the sun on his face, to readjust to the time of day and exist within the world. As he changes into jeans and a lightweight shirt, he finds himself thinking of Eunsook. He’s looking forward to seeing her again, in a way that surprises him, because the thought of it gives him far more pleasure than he’d expect from just going to meet a colleague out of the circumstance that has them both attending the same primary school musical. She does seem like a very nice and friendly person, despite him acting like such a headcase this morning. Minseok hopes that he can give a better impression this afternoon.

He stops at the flower shop in the entrance lobby and buys two bouquets of flowers, one each for Nayoung and Eunbi, picking out one with a cute cat toy nestled in it for Nayoung and a miniature teddy bear for Eunbi, making sure he avoids the ones with tags that say “get well soon” and “congratulations - it’s a boy/girl!”. It’s probably complete overkill, buying them flowers for acting in a primary school musical that every member of the school is required to take part in, but they’re his girls and he’s proud of them, and he can’t resist.

The flower store worker packs the bouquets in a boxy brown paper bag so that they won’t get crushed, and Minseok makes his way down to the basement parking for his car to drive over to the school. He gets there with 15 minutes to spare and follows the flow of parents and younger or older siblings to find his way to the assembly hall where the play is being performed. He has his ticket already, provided to him by Eunbi a couple of weeks ago when he took her to her cello lesson. He stands outside the entrance, trying not to look too awkward, enjoying the sunshine despite the baking heat it comes with. It’s been way too long since he was outside at a time of day that included the sun. 

He sees Eunsook approaching 5 minutes later, and finds his face slipping into such a bright smile that he has to force himself to tone it down a little. No need to scare her off by showing her all his gums. She’s let her hair out of her bun to fall around her face in soft waves, and the pale yellow blouse tucked into cream linen shorts suit her colouring. Minseok feels like he’s getting a cool breath of air when she stops in front of him and gives him the same happy eye-smile she’d given him this morning.

“Ready for the magic?” she asks, and Minseok finds the laughter bubbling up inside him in a way so free and easy that it shocks him. He cannot remember the last time he felt so genuinely happy. He doesn’t think he’s laughed like this since Ilsung died.

“I am,” he says. “Shall we go in?”

Eunsook puts her hand on his arm, just as naturally as she’d patted him earlier, and they walk into the assembly hall together, passing their tickets to a couple of kids dressed as fairies and pirates who are on door duty, supervised by an eagle-eyed teacher, and getting a programme each in return. Inside the assembly hall, long rows of chairs have been set up on top of the coloured lines of the basketball court markings, facing the stage, whose curtains are closed. It’s extremely noisy in the echoey hall with all the family and friends chatting as they filter in, but Minseok is very used to noise. In fact, like in the ED, he likes it. Bustle and noise comforts him, makes him feel a little less alone.

He’s not alone, though. Not today. Eunsook sits beside him, putting her handbag by her feet and looking curiously at Minseok’s bag. “What’s in there?”

“Flowers for my daughters,” Minseok admits, which makes Eunsook laugh. 

“That’s so sweet,” she says. “I didn’t even think of that, but I don’t think my nephew would appreciate flowers anyway.”

Minseok grins. “Probably not. I wouldn’t have, at ten. Though I was never into theatre, I was obsessed with soccer.”

“Oh, a sporty kid, huh?” Eunsook smiles. “I was a theatre kid myself. I like to think my nephew takes after me.”

They look at their programmes, Eunsook pointing out her nephew’s name and headshot near the front under Principals, and Minseok finding Eunbi’s name and picture on the same page. Nayoung is further in, halfway down the list of “Miscellaneous Pirates on Captain Hook’s Ship.” Before long the school drama teacher is up on the stage welcoming everyone and introducing the show. The buzz in the hall quiets as the lights go down, and Minseok turns his attention to the stage.

He gets a jolt of pride in his chest when the curtains open on the children’s nursery scene, spotting Eunbi immediately, dressed as a boy with her hair tucked up under the top hat her character wears, huge round glasses perched on her nose. At first, he just watches her, admiring the way she projects her lines out over the hall, how confident she is. He should be following the play, he knows, but he’s here to see Eunbi. 

He does get caught up in the story a little more after a while. The musical is actually better than he’d expected for a primary school, the kids well-practiced, and he doesn’t feel inclined to fall asleep at any moment. He smiles and nods when Captain Hook comes on and Eunsook tugs his sleeve and points her nephew out, as if Minseok would have forgotten that the pirate captain is played by her nephew. The crocodile is played by a whole bunch of kids under a huge green sheet with a massive toothed jaw in Chinese dragon style, and it makes its way off the stage and right around the hall to snap at the audience. Minseok finds Nayoung among the pirates on the ship, well-disguised in an eyepatch and with half her teeth blacked out. She has one line, which she’s given Minseok a preview of; it’s “Arrrrr, matey!” and she shouts it out with a grin that shows off all her blacked-out teeth. Minseok is glad she seems to be enjoying herself despite all her complaints about not wanting to be in the show and how much soccer playing time she’s been wasting by having to go to rehearsals at lunchtime instead.

When the show is over, parents applauding as the kids come out to bow, Minseok and Eunsook make their way around the outside of the hall to the classrooms where the kids are changing to wait for them to come out. The playground is crazy with so many proud parents and excited kids rushing in every direction. Minseok casts his eyes over the kids for any sign of Eunbi or Nayoung, but his eyes land instead on a familiar figure. It’s Jangmi, in a pretty summery dress, arm linked with the boyfriend he’d seen across the soccer fields. Jeongseok, his memory supplies the name Nayoung had told him then. He doesn’t realise he’s gone still and tense until Eunsook tugs at his arm, looking at him with slight concern wrinkling her eyebrows.

“Minseok?” she asks. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Minseok says, slightly strained, trying frantically to figure out what to do. He should go over and say hello to Jangmi, it would be absolutely rude not to, but he doesn’t want to meet Jeongseok. He doesn’t want to have to smile politely and shake hands with the man who’s taken over his place in the family that had once been his. The happiness he’s been feeling all afternoon is replaced by a sharp ache in his chest. The pain of all he’s lost.

Eunsook is looking more and more worried. Minseok wonders what he looks like. He debates saying the crowd or the heat is getting to him and making a cowardly retreat, but the option is taken out of his hands when Jangmi turns and sees him, and their eyes instantly meet and lock. Jangmi gives him a wave and begins moving through the throng towards him, and Minseok is out of options.

Jangmi and Jeongseok appear in front of them. “Minseok, glad to see you made it,” Jangmi says, a little acerbically. Minseok winces at the subtle jab beneath her words. He hasn’t let the girls down since the terrible night he’d forgotten Eunbi at her cello lesson, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it, after all the years of broken promises. He doesn’t blame her for still not entirely trusting him. He wonders if she ever will. “This is my partner, Lee Jeongseok. Jeongseok, my ex-husband, Kim Minseok.”

Minseok takes the offered hand and gives the man a forced smile. He’s much taller than Minseok, and he has to look up to meet his eyes. “Pleased to meet you,” he says, relieved that it doesn’t come out strained. This is such an awkward situation, compounded by Minseok’s inappropriate urge to punch the poor man on the nose. None of this is Jeongseok’s fault, he reminds himself, and drops his hand as soon as he can without seeming rude. 

“This is my colleague, Lee Eunsook,” he says, falling back on politeness. “Her nephew is in Nayoung’s class. Eunsook, Jangmi.” He stands there pointlessly while Eunsook and Jangmi smile politely at each other. Jangmi asks Eunsook who her nephew is, and evidently knows the boy by her reaction. Minseok feels so inadequate right now. He doesn’t know Nayoung’s classmates. He should probably make polite small talk with Jeongseok, but he feels like he might be sick if he tries. Instead he turns to scan the crowd for any sign of his daughters. 

He feels like he’s been saved from drowning when he spots Nayoung, pulling Eunbi by the hand, wearing their street clothes though they’re still in thick stage makeup. He waves to them, and the way both of their faces light up when their eyes land on him goes a long way to chase off the horrible shame and inadequacy and unhappiness that have returned to tangle up inside him. The girls run over hand in hand and he opens his arms, getting a hug from both of them at once.

“You were so good!” he exclaims, and gets a torrent of excited words tumbling all over each other from both girls as they start to tell him all about the show and all the things that had gone wrong and whether he’d noticed. “I didn’t notice a single thing wrong,” he lies smoothly. “You were both brilliant. It’s the best primary school play I’ve ever seen.” 

This is not saying a lot, as Minseok has never seen a primary school play before, but he doesn’t need to tell them that. They both beam at the praise, and Minseok has to crack up at the state of Nayoung’s teeth. “You look like you’ve been in a fist-fight,” he tells her. 

“I have scurvy,” she says, baring them at him. “I’m a scurvy pirate!”

Minseok remembers the bouquets in the bag over his elbow. “Hang on, I’ve got something for you,” he says. He pulls out Eunbi’s first and hands it to her, smiling when she gives an ear-splitting squeal of delight. “For the star of the show,” he says. Then he gets out the second bouquet and hands it to Nayoung. “And for the other star.”

“Me, dad?” Nayoung asks, taking the flowers, eyes round with surprise. “I wasn’t a star. I was just a dumb old pirate.”

“You’re a star to me,” Minseok tells her as Eunbi rushes up to Jangmi to show her mother her flowers and the little teddy bear. Nayoung rolls her eyes at him and tells him he’s so cheesy, but she’s obviously delighted to get flowers too, and she takes the little cat out of the bouquet and coos over it. Minseok glances up to see Jangmi watching him over Eunbi’s head. There’s an expression on her face that he hasn’t seen turned on him for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like.

Jangmi is smiling at him.

“That was nice of you, to get them flowers,” she says. 

Minseok smiles back automatically, but there’s no feeling in it, because he’s too stunned. Jangmi has not smiled at him even once since the accident. All he’s had from her is anger, hatred, disgust, and resignation. But it’s not only that which has shocked him. It’s that the smile from Jangmi, once something which he’d adored and done all he could to elicit, now only brings him uncertainty and a little heartache.

He watches Jangmi praise the girls, watches Jeongseok tell them how good they were and pat their heads. Beside him, Eunsook turns to him, and he forces himself to look away and look at her as she speaks.

“They love their flowers, don’t they,” she says, smiling. 

Eunsook’s smile is really something. It’s gentle, and her round cheeks push her eyes up into curves, expressing joy all the way through. And Minseok’s heart inside his chest gives a single, hard thump.

“I guess so,” he manages, trying not to look too transfixed. Eunsook notices her nephew then and goes over to congratulate him, and Minseok turns after her as if she’s got him magnetized to her. He has to force himself not to follow her, to stay with the girls, who still want to tell him all about the play. He listens as they chatter, until finally Jangmi tells them it’s time to go home and to say goodbye to him and thank him for their flowers.

Minseok hugs them both, tells them one last time how proud he is of them. He watches them go, Jangmi’s arm around Nayoung’s shoulders and Jeongseok holding Eunbi’s hand. He feels the ache again. The loss of a family suddenly feels so strong in that moment that tears come into his eyes. He puts his hands on his hips and blinks hard, trying desperately to control himself. He’s lost so much. God, he’s lost so, so much.

Eunsook reappears beside him. Minseok doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there like a statue, fighting his tears. He clears his throat as he turns to her. She’s with her nephew and two adults who must be the nephew’s parents. He fixes an expression of polite interest on his face, praying that it isn’t obvious how close he is to breaking down. 

“I’m going to my sister’s for dinner,” Eunsook says, “so I’ll leave you now. Thanks for the company.”

“It was my pleasure,” Minseok says, throat aching. He sends her nephew a grin. “You were a great Captain Hook, mate.”

“Thanks,” the boy says, grinning back without a hint of shyness. Eunsook is looking at Minseok, eyebrows pinching with the concern he’s seen there before. Minseok needs to stop being such a headcase in front of her. What on earth must she think of him? Why does she keep on seeing through his mask and straight into the things he wants most to hide?

The family are leaving. Eunsook hesitates in front of him a moment longer. 

“I really enjoyed spending time with you,” she says. There’s something in her face he’d seen before, this morning. Is it - hope?

Before he can think better of it, Minseok holds out his hand. “Give me your phone,” he says. “Let’s do something together again sometime soon.”

What the heck is he doing, he thinks as Eunsook puts her unlocked phone into his hand so he can add his contact. When it’s done, he sends himself a text, and looks up as his phone buzzes in his pocket. But Eunsook is smiling at him again, and it replaces some of the pain inside Minseok with something much lighter and more hopeful. 

“I’ll look forward to it, Minseok,” she says, and turns to follow her family.


	36. August 27th

The waves crash onto the white sand on the small Busan beach as the sun shines its golden rays down at earth. A couple of children scream in joy from the water’s edge as their parents watch over them, a group of teenagers play beach volleyball in a makeshift court drawn in the sand, and elders walk their dogs on the pathway near the road behind them. A paved picnic area edges the sand, and Jongin sees Sehun standing at the grill with tongs in hand, as well as lots of his friends from the hospital and their partners and families scattered around the immediate area. It seems they’re the last to arrive. Jongin turns to look at Sohee with a smile. She looks beautiful with her hair in a ponytail and sun-kissed skin. Their bare feet dig into the soft sand as they make their way to the party.

Mikyung sees them first and taps Sehun’s arm, pointing them out. Sehun looks up and his face lights up when their eyes meet. “Jongin!” he shouts and runs in the sand to meet them, still holding the grilling tongs. Jongin opens his arms just as Sehun stumbles in the soft sand, practically falling into his embrace. They laugh as Sohee continues on to meet up with the rest of the party. Sehun lets go of Jongin and attempts to playfully ruffle his hair with the hand that isn’t still holding the grilling tongs, but Jongin expertly catches his wrist before he can manage it.

“You made it,” Sehun beams. He looks so happy to see Jongin. “How was the drive?”

Jongin is about to let go of Sehun’s wrist and answer, but he freezes upon catching a sparkle of gold on his friend’s ring finger.

“What’s this?” he asks, lifting Sehun’s hand higher to get a better look.

“What’s what?” Sehun asks, tugging his wrist back out of Jongin’s hand and hiding it behind his back.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about!” Jongin makes an attempt to grab Sehun’s wrist again, but Sehun dodges nimbly aside and sends him a look of pure mischief. Jongin groans.

“Come on, man, just tell me,” he whines.

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” Sehun says, smirking.

“The ring! That wasn’t just any ring, right? Sehun...” Jongin trails after Sehun like an ignored puppy as Sehun starts to make his way back towards the grill and the rest of the party, where Mikyung has already pounced on Sohee and pushed a drink into her hand.

It’s the first time Sohee and Mikyung are meeting, but they’re already laughing together like they’ve known each other forever. Jongin is distracted from pouting at Sehun by the sight. As shy as he and Sehun are with new people, their girlfriends are outgoing. He knew they’d get on well. Rather than join in, he decides to let them talk about girl things and turns his attention back to Sehun, who has returned to the grill to flip the meat he left on there.

\---

“Sehun, stop being mean,” Jongin says, digging strong fingers into Sehun’s side. Sehun turns around to see his best friend with the classic Jongin pout on his lips, eyes gazing at him reproachfully. Sehun snorts with laughter. Teasing Jongin is so rewarding. He can practically see the cogs turn in his brain, trying to decide whether to be offended Sehun didn’t tell him he was proposing or if he should be happy they’ve gotten engaged. Sehun knows Jongin will understand when he learns Sehun doesn’t want a big ceremony. He knows Sehun’s parents and how overbearing they can be. He will tell him later, but for now Sehun just wants to enjoy making his best friend squirm.

“- lost the competition and I can’t believe I found him attractive as he fell into the water,” Mikyung says and Sohee laughs. They’re looking at Jongin and Sehun and both men turn towards their partners to stare at them.

“I want to see Sehun on a surfboard,” Sohee giggles and Mikyung smiles. She sends her fiance a smile and turns back to her conversation with Sohee to explain that he’s actually a decent surfer, just not when he’s blinded by her gorgeous appearance.

“I didn’t lose,” Sehun interjects weakly in their conversation and Mikyung just raises an eyebrow at him. “I came second from the bottom…” Jongin snorts but Sohee shuts him up when she smiles sweetly at him and starts telling Mikyung how he ended up in the wrong part of the city. Jongin flushes a bright pink at the embarrassing story and turns to Sehun.

“Grilling meat, was it?” he asks and Sehun nods. They make their way away from their partners towards the grill on the paved picnic area when Sehun eyes another friend in the sand.

“I’ll be there in a few!” he tells Jongin before he makes his way towards Chanyeol and Yeonseok.

\---

Chanyeol sits in the sand with his legs stretched out in front of him. Yeonseok sits next to him, feet gently digging sand up and piling it on top of his shin. Their fingers are gently laced between them, the warm sand a soft comfort. They’re staring at the water, the blue ocean bleeding into the blue horizon. Even though Chanyeol had been nervous to introduce his Yeonseok as his boyfriend to people he didn’t have a particularly close bond with, no one has even so much as raised an eyebrow. Chanyeol looks up as Sehun approaches. The tall dermatologist sits next to them in the sand.

“Hiding away?” he asks and Chanyeol shakes his head. They’re not hiding. Not here, not today. He lets go of Yeonseok’s hand, only to move closer and snake his arm around Yeonseok’s waist with a big smile. The pile of sand on top of his shin tumbles down.

“I’m just enjoying my boyfriend before the crazy starts,” he says. Sehun wrinkles his nose.

“Ew, spare me the lovey-dovey stuff,” he says. Chanyeol laughs and reaches down to get a fistful of sand and throws it softly at Sehun. It lands on Yeonseok but Sehun retaliates with a fistful of sand of his own. Chanyeol reaches down to get another fist but before he gets to throw it, Yeonseok reaches out to put a firm hand on his chest and a fixed gaze. Chanyeol dumps the sand beside him with a pout.

“Weren’t you children ever taught not to throw sand?” Yeonseok asks, grinning to soften the words.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol says sheepishly and leans over to brush the sand off of Yeonseok’s bare legs.

\---

Chorong runs down the beach with Nayoung and Eunbi hot on her heels, giggling. Nayoung is carrying a large rainbow coloured beach ball. They reach the line Jongdae drew for them earlier and Nayoung stops on one side as Eunbi and Chorong assemble on the other.

“We’ll win this time!” Eunbi shouts towards her sister and Nayoung sticks out her tongue.

“As if!” she shouts back and Chorong shouts an excited “Yeah!” from beside Eunbi. The beach ball flies through the air as Nayoung kicks it over the line towards Chorong. Chorong tries to kick the ball but misses by an inch and the ball rolls away from them. She’s laughing when she runs to pick it up and the game continues. It’s clear that the two younger girls are no match for the soccer-loving older girl, but they give it their all as the sun lowers on the afternoon sky. When Nayoung announces her win 15 to 4, Eunbi and Chorong give up by lying down and staring up at the cotton clouds building in the sky. Nayoung joins them, beach ball by her side, as she points towards a particular cloud and announces it is a rabbit. A dragon follows the rabbit and then a frog. Chorong giggles as she tells them she sees a princess. After five minutes of cloud watching, Eunbi starts to get restless again.

“I want a marshmallow,” she announces to no one in particular. Nayoung turns her head towards her and sighs.

“I don’t think dad will let us eat candy right before dinner. I heard mom telling him not to let us do that anymore,” she says, and Eunbi sighs heavily, regretting the loss of the dad who would let them do whatever they wanted.

“We could still try,” she suggests, but Chorong wriggles around in the sand excitedly to interrupt.

“My dad will let us!” She sits up to look expectantly at the two older girls. Eunbi and Nayoung widen their eyes.

“Really?” they ask in unison and Chorong nods enthusiastically.

“Sure he will, if I ask him nicely.”

It doesn’t take long for the three girls to agree it would be best to ask Jongdae instead of Minseok, and as they run back towards the party, the beach ball is forgotten on the wobbly line drawn in the sand.

\---

Jongdae has just come back to the grill area after leaving Bodeul to his task of building a grand castle in the soft sand. He’d told his son that the wet sand near the water will stick better than the dry, but Bodeul had refused to listen to his very sensible advice and insisted on piling up the soft golden sand nearer the picnic area. Jongdae watches from the corner of his eye as the first of Bodeul’s towers wobbles dangerously before the side collapses.

“I thought he’d be older before he started blatantly disregarding the wisdom of his father,” he says to Baekhyun.

“What wisdom?” Baekhyun returns rudely, grinning when Jongdae shoves his shoulder. Baekhyun looks so much better than he’d done in winter. Not only must the therapy be working, the sun seems to help too. Baekhyun starts to chatter about the puppy Yeonseok is going to get to train as a police dog and how Chanyeol and Baekhyun are allowed to come help him pick one out, and what names they’re thinking of. Jongdae likes dogs too, and doubtless the kids would love a puppy, but he couldn’t keep one in the apartment with three children already filling it. They’d need to move to a house.

He gets distracted from discussing puppy names with Baekhyun as Chorong, Nayoung and Eunbi appear from nowhere and surround him closely, all peering at him with big, hopeful eyes. Jongdae laughs, startled by being so suddenly encircled.

“What’s up, girls?” he asks, patting Chorong’s head automatically.

“Daddy,” Chorong says in that cute voice she uses when she wants something from him that she knows her mother wouldn’t allow her. He glances around, but Ahreum is nowhere nearby, and Jongdae finds his resolve to stand firm start to crumble like Bodeul’s sandcastle, and he doesn’t even know what they want. Damn, he thinks.

“Will you roast us a marshmallow? Just one, daddy...” Chorong clasps her hands and wobbles her lower lip and it takes all of Jongdae’s strength not to scoop her up and give her the entire bag of marshmallows. Beside him, Baekhyun smiles at the girls, and Chorong seizes that as an opportunity as well.

“Uncle Baekhyun!” she says cutely, sending him her most adorable smile. Baekhyun chuckles and pokes Jongdae in the side.

“Give the princesses a marshmallow,” he tells Jongdae with a smile and large wide eyes, just like the girls. Jongdae laughs.

“Ah, you want one too, Princess Baekhyun?” he asks, and the girls shriek with laughter. Baekhyun sticks out his lower lip and nods in a startlingly accurate imitation of Chorong, and Jongdae has absolutely no defences against this from any of them.

“Just one then,” he says, and turns to get the bag of marshmallows and four skewers from the picnic table behind them. He places one marshmallow on each stick and hands Baekhyun his.

“You can do your own, princess or not,” he says, the girls giggling again at Baekhyun’s offended gasp before he walks towards the grill. They all follow him over, giggling to each other. It’s probably about having won him over so easily, Jongdae thinks resignedly. There are flames as the coals slowly start to heat up and he holds all three sticks over the fire to caramelize them. Baekhyun, of course, holds his too close and gives a shout of dismay as it ignites and burns to a blackened crisp.

“Eat it, uncle Baekhyun!” the girls encourage, falling about when Baekhyun nibbles at the charcoaled marshmallow and pulls expressive expressions of disgust to make them laugh.

“Don’t do that to ours,” Eunbi says from beside his elbow, watching her marshmallow avidly.

“Don’t worry, I’m much more patient than Baekhyun,” Jongdae tells her, and proves it true when all three marshmallows turn a beautiful golden colour. He waves them in the air to cool them and hands one to each of the excited girls, telling them to sit down and eat them and not run with the sticks. All of them nod before they walk over to sit down on the sand. Jongdae watches them with a smile until he’s distracted by a hand on his shoulder. He looks around and freezes guiltily at the sight of his wife, but Ahreum just shakes her head in fond resignation.

\---

“Here you go,” Minseok says and hands Eunsook a can of beer. She smiles, that hopeful smile that reaches her eyes, and thanks him. They’re standing with their backs to the small table full of fruit and vegetables and they keep snacking on the small pieces of fruit. Every time Eunsook steals a strawberry, she giggles and the sound is so cute it makes Minseok smile.

When he’d received the invitation to the barbecue party in Busan, Minseok had immediately thought of Eunsook. He’d been so busy in the week following the primary school play, but for some reason, he hadn’t been able to forget her smile and the ease she’d carried. Aside from bringing the girls, he had asked Sehun if it was okay to bring a friend. No problem, had been the answer. Now that she’s here with him, Minseok is glad he had dared ask. He glances around the beach as kids are called from the water and parents bring them home to prepare for dinner. He notices three girls eating marshmallows and for a few seconds, it doesn’t strike him that two of them are his. When it finally registers, he curses. He’s been trying to up his responsibility as a father.

“It doesn’t matter,” Eunsook tells him from where she leans against the table behind him. Minseok wrinkles his nose and looks at her.

“I wasn’t supposed to let them eat candy,” Minseok sighs.

“It’s just one marshmallow. Didn’t you ever do something you weren’t allowed to as a child?” Eunsook asks. Minseok shrugs and watches his daughters as they start play-fighting with the sticks.

“No,” he says absentmindedly.

“I don’t believe that,” Eunsook says and gently pushes at his shoulder. Minseok laughs surprised and turns to her. He reaches out to tickle her and she giggles as she squirms away.

“I was a very well-behaved kid,” he says but even he can hear the mirth in his voice and they both know it’s a lie. Eunsook snorts and reaches over to poke his cheek.

“Liar,” she says and smiles and Minseok snaps after her finger in play and she squeals as she removes it out of range. They laugh and suddenly, Minseok realises what he’s doing. He’s behaving like a flirtatious teenager. He clears his throat and Eunsook giggles and turns around to steal another strawberry from the buffet table. Joonmyun joins them to get a beer as well and he sends Minseok a curious glance.

“Oh, Dr. Lee,” Joonmyun says when he realises who the woman beside Minseok is. She sends him a kind smile.

“Call me Eunsook, we’re not at work,” she says. After a few minutes of polite small talk, Eunsook excuses herself and leaves them. Joonmyun raises an eyebrow as he watches Minseok take a step in the same direction, almost following her like he’s a piece of scrap metal attracted to a magnet.

“Eunsook, huh?” he asks. Minseok blinks.

“What?” he asks. Joonmyun raises his eyebrows, grinning and Minseok’s eyes go wide in realisation.

“Oh no! She’s just a friend,” he tells Joonmyun. “She helped me with a case.”

Joonmyun doesn’t look convinced, still smiling a little, and Minseok wonders with some embarrassment if Joonmyun had seen him playing around with Eunsook before. He wants to protest further that it’s not what it looks like, but Joonmyun changes the subject, telling him about Yejoon’s first words. He smiles so proudly when he tells Minseok that Yejoon learned to say appa a few days ago, and Minseok remembers how it had felt when Ilsung called him appa for the first time too. Instead of flinching away from the memory, he allows himself to feel the mixture of love and sadness that will never really go away, then lets it fade into the background again as they talk about their children’s first words.

\---

After helping Sehun with the grill for a while Yixing goes to look for his wife. He finds Songmi crouching on the damp sand with Yejin, helping Mari dig a canal in the sand, while Ahreum helps Bodeul with what looks to be some kind of sand fort. Songmi looks up at him when he arrives, and he sends her a soft smile, which she reciprocates. Yixing crouches next to her and looks at the channel slowly advancing towards the waves.

“What are we doing?” he asks but Songmi doesn’t get to answer, before Bodeul has explained his plans for the next big project, a fort with such strong walls that the incoming tide won’t wash it away, and Yixing laughs. He turns towards Jongdae’s son and starts helping him pile sand into his bucket.

“Can you watch Yejoon for a few minutes?” Yejin asks them. She dusts her summer dress off. “I just need to fetch the side dishes from the car.” Yixing nods and turns around to glance at Yejoon, who is sitting up on a towel with a few plastic blocks to entertain him.

“No problem, I’ll look out for him!” He scoops the boy into his arms and places him in his lap. He continues helping Bodeul by digging the sand up so that the little boy can easily pat it into place. He looks over his shoulder to watch his wife as she digs with two hands and enthusiastically talks to Mari as the channel advances towards the ocean.

Someone crouches down beside him and Yixing looks around to see Kyungsoo regarding the growing walls of the fort dubiously.

“Do you want to help?” Yixing asks, grinning a little, because he’d never imagined Kyungsoo in such surroundings before, and especially not voluntarily coming over to help with a child’s sand fort. Kyungsoo shrugs.

“Jongin is being unbearable because Sehun won’t tell him whether or not he’s gotten married without anyone’s knowledge,” he says. “He keeps whining at everybody else to ask Sehun for him.” Yixing laughs at the image, turning to see Jongin at the edge of the picnic area, talking to Baekhyun and Chanyeol with a soft pout on his lips.

“I saw the way you looked at Songmi just now, by the way,” Kyungsoo says, and Yixing returns his attention to the radiologist in front of him.

“What way?” he asks. Kyungsoo stretches his face into a grimace in an attempt to replicate whichever look it is he believes he’s seen. Yixing snorts at the sight and Kyungsoo glares at him.

“Like you have secrets,” Kyungsoo elaborates.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yixing says but the other doctor just narrows his eyes. “She’s my wife, Kyungsoo, I always look at her with affection and love.”

Kyungsoo groans. “Oh come on, not you too!” It has Yixing laughing out loud and apologizing. Kyungsoo stands up again and points to Yixing’s lap. “The one in your lap is eating sand. You might want to do something about that.” When Yixing glances down at Yejoon he finds the baby with a fistful of sand in his mouth, and frantically starts cleaning it out of Yejoon’s mouth before he can try to swallow it, winding up with fingers covered in slobbery sand and Ahreum laughing at him from inside the sand fort.

\---

A couple of seagulls fly over them as Kyungsoo makes his way back to the paved area where Mikyung and Sohee have started to set up for their dinner, chattering about the tigers in Bukhansan Zoo. Yejin is arranging the side dishes she has brought from home and Yeonseok is helping her. Kyungsoo feels a little hopeless as he walks towards them. It’s not that he’s unfriendly with them or unhappy to be there, it’s just a little odd to be the only single person at a party where practically all of them are with someone. For every day he’s felt normal in the past few months, it just feels odd to be surrounded by people who are all partnered up or even have kids. He turns around to cast a glance over the ocean. A face obscures his vision a few seconds later. Baekhyun’s wide smile is right in front of him.

“I can’t believe they dragged you from in front of your computer,” he teases. “You do know the beach is also a part of nature?”

“I don’t mind nature,” Kyungsoo tells Baekhyun. “Nature doesn’t talk my ears off like you and Chanyeol do.” It has Baekhyun pouting, but his whine of protest is interrupted when a soft Katalk! sounds from Baekhyun’s pocket. He swiftly checks his phone and the smile on his face grows soft, smitten, like the thing on the screen is the most precious thing he’s ever seen. He raises a questioning eyebrow but Baekhyun doesn’t notice. Instead of asking, Kyungsoo leans over so he can see the name on Baekhyun’s Katalk conversation, and reads the words Lu Han followed by a heart. Not a name Kyungsoo knows.

“Who’s Lu Han?” he asks curiously. Baekhyun looks up in surprise, which is quickly replaced with something else, something that looks a whole lot like affection. But Baekhyun doesn’t have a partner, Kyungsoo remembers. The break-up with his ex-girlfriend is what caused his illness. Kyungsoo knows enough about it from Chanyeol and Jongdae to know this is not the look Baekhyun has been sporting for months.

Baekhyun smiles. “He’s my boyfriend,” he says, gazing down at the phone screen adoringly. His eyes are practically shining. Kyungsoo looks at him closely. Is this what being in love looks like? He turns to glance around, watches Chanyeol poke his tongue out at Yeonseok and Ahreum roll her eyes at Jongdae. None of them look like Baekhyun.

“That seems fast,” he comments, and regrets it immediately when Baekhyun’s face falls, the light fading from his eyes as his whole body droops, curling in on himself like Kyungsoo has just punched him in the stomach. Kyungsoo is so alarmed by the sudden change that he almost reaches out for Baekhyun, but he doesn’t know what to do.

“Not that fast,” Baekhyun mumbles towards the ground, and Kyungsoo could kick himself for managing to kill Baekhyun’s happiness with just a couple of words. He doesn’t get what was so wrong about what he said, because he knows Baekhyun has just barely recovered from the last breakup, but Baekhyun’s reaction tells him that he was wrong to say it. This is why Kyungsoo shouldn’t try to understand romance, he thinks unhappily, watching as Baekhyun turns away and shuffles over to go stand beside Sehun at the grill.

But something about this reaction seems strange to Kyungsoo. How could just a few simple words out of Kyungsoo make such a big impact on Baekhyun’s mood, when he could have easily just explained it? It doesn’t seem like the reaction of someone who is emotionally stable. He watches Baekhyun laugh up at Sehun as he clings to the younger doctor’s arm, mood already apparently swinging right back up into the stratosphere.

He hopes someone is still looking out for Baekhyun, because apparently Kyungsoo doesn’t know how to do it without hurting him.

\---

“Can I do it?” a child’s voice asks Sehun from behind. He turns around, already alarmed at being addressed by a kid, and finds Minseok’s oldest girl. Was it Minyoung? Nayoung? Damn, he can’t remember.

The girl points to the meat on the grill. “Can I try grilling? Please?” she repeats, staring up at him with soulful eyes. Sehun nervously glances around for Minseok. What the hell is he supposed to say? Minseok is deep in conversation with Joonmyun and doesn’t hear Sehun’s attempt at a telepathic cry for help, and he looks back at the girl helplessly.

“Uh...Nayoung?” he tries, and the girl nods, grinning. At least he got her name right. “You can try as long as you do exactly what I tell you.”

“I will!” Nayoung assures him, so Sehun hands her the tongs and grabs her hand to guide her on how to turn the meat so it is cooked on both sides equally. She giggles and chatters away, but Sehun doesn’t really hear her words. He’s too concentrated on making sure her hands get nowhere near the grill and that the meat doesn’t spatter hot fat onto her. Grilling never felt so dangerous. Minseok will slay him if he hurts his daughter in any way, but how was Sehun supposed to say no to a look like that?

Nayoung cooks her piece of meat easily and runs to get a plate when Sehun declares it done. Sehun puts it on her plate and as she runs back towards the table to sit next to her sister, Sehun hears Minseok call after her, reminding her to walk when she’s carrying food. Where was he five minutes ago?

Laughter rises around the picnic tables and people have switched up seats, Joonmyun talking passionately to Yeonseok about congenital heart defects as Kyungsoo and Baekhyun argue about the best tactics to use in a game they both play. Sehun squeezes into the miniscule gap on a bench between Mikyung and Chanyeol, edging the paediatrician aside with his hip, then slides his arm around Mikyung’s waist. He feels warm as he watches his friends chatter, eat and have a great time. Mikyung turns to look up at him, a hint of knowledge in her eyes and Sehun thinks he’ll never be anything but grateful that she understands him so well.

Mikyung asks Songmi if she doesn’t want a beer, since she’s only drinking water, and the other woman shakes her head.

“Designated driver,” she says, tilting her head in Yixing’s general direction. Sehun had never pegged Yixing as much of a drinker, and Sehun hasn’t seen him with any alcoholic drinks in hand so far, but he doesn’t question her answer.

\---

The evening wears on, the sky painted in purples and oranges as the sun sets heaven on fire as it sets in the horizon. They turn on the small lanterns Mikyung has brought and bring out the blankets Yixing and Songmi have stored in their car. The children are roasting marshmallows on the last embers in the grill, Jongdae helping Mari holding her stick while Ahreum has placed Bodeul in her lap and gently prevents him from dropping the marshmallow into the embers. Yejin sits next to them, Yejoon sleeping in the sling crossing over her chest, as she quietly converses with Ahreum. The tide has come in, and Bodeul’s fort has inevitably been washed away despite all efforts to block the waves with walls of sand.

Baekhyun sits alone in the cooling soft sand, staring at the water and hugging his knees to his chest. Lu Han had stopped messaging him an hour or so ago because he had to finish some work, and Baekhyun is trying his best not to bother him, but it’s harder to feel happy when Lu Han isn’t giving him attention. Now he drifts in an empty-minded space as he gazes at the ocean, and barely notices another person sitting down beside him, legs spread out into the sand. They sit in silence for a few minutes before the man beside him clears his throat.

“I’m sorry, Baekhyun,” Kyungsoo says. Baekhyun blinks and turns to look at him.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asks, sincerely confused. Kyungsoo avoids his gaze and looks out at the ocean.

“What I said earlier. I’m sorry I made you feel bad. That was totally uncool of me,” Kyungsoo says. He looks back at Baekhyun, and his dark eyes seem so, so deep as he searches Baekhyun’s face. What he’s looking for, though, Baekhyun doesn’t know.

“That’s okay,” he says. It really doesn’t feel to him like a big enough deal that Kyungsoo has to apologize. “I was probably too sensitive.”

“You seem really happy with Lu Han,” Kyungsoo says, and Baekhyun nods fervently, already feeling his mood lift at the mention of his boyfriend.

“I am,” he agrees.

Kyungsoo smiles at him. “How did you guys meet?” he asks, and Baekhyun is more than eager to tell Kyungsoo all about it. As they sit there, talking as the sun sets, Baekhyun is content. He’s with friends, he’s all better, and he has Lu Han now. He is happy. There is no other way to describe what he’s feeling. This is him being happy.

\---

Yejin grabs Songmi’s hand and pulls her towards the water’s edge. The distance between them and the rest of the party makes the beach seem serene. They walk to the left, follow the water as it eats at the beach in the summer evening.

“How are you?” Yejin asks. Songmi looks at her with a smile.

“Oh, I’m fine!”

“Did you get over your illness?”

The question catches Songmi off guard for a second until she remembers telling Yejin that she couldn’t meet her for coffee last week because she was throwing up.

“Oh yeah, turned out it was nothing much. I’m good now. Don’t look so worried,” she laughs when Yejin turns to look at her with a furrowed forehead.

Yejin relaxes, smiling back at her. “I just don’t like it when my friends get sick...” her voice fades out, and Songmi walks a few steps ahead before she realises Yejin has stopped walking. Songmi turns around to see Yejin staring at her, eyes round and mouth dropped open.

“Songmi!” she gasps, and Songmi can’t help but smile. That’s all the confirmation they need, and Yejin runs forward to catch Songmi’s hands in both hers, their eyes meeting as they smile.

“It’s still early,” Songmi whispers. “We’re not telling anyone yet. Don’t act too excited and make people curious.”

“I understand,” Yejin says. She looks like she can barely hold herself back from hugging Songmi, but instead they just continue their walk down the beach, clasped hands swinging between them.

\---

The warmth from the grill is slowly subsiding as the embers cool down. The girls are huddled up in a small tent with one of the blankets, reading a book Eunbi has brought with her by torchlight. Jongdae is so impressed by Minseok’s daughters. There have been no fights or arguments, and they’ve taken such good care of Chorong all day. Mari yawns in his hold and cuddles closer to him. He wraps the blanket closer around her and bends his head to whisper in her ear.

“Sleep, baby girl.” She shakes her head but settles against his chest. She can barely keep her eyes open, but he knows why she’s so reluctant to sleep. She wants to be big and brave too, doesn’t want to miss anything that goes on, but her small body is overwhelmed with all the things she’s done today and it won’t be long before her consciousness loses the battle it’s fighting. He rocks her back and forth gently. They have arranged her blanket and a pillow on the car seat, a large pillow between the space between seats so she won’t fall down if she moves around in her sleep. All he needs now is for her to actually fall asleep.

Mari rubs her eyes and yawns again.

“No sleep,” she says, but her eyelids are too heavy now and they slip closed before she forces them open again. Her battle gets harder with each passing second. Two minutes later, she’s sleeping soundly in his arms. Joonmyun sits down beside him on the picnic bench and watches father and daughter.

“She’s lovely,” he tells Jongdae softly so as to not wake her up. Jongdae smiles.

“She is when she’s asleep,” he says wryly.

“What is it like to have more than one?” Joonmyun asks.

“Why? You thinking of having a second?” Jongdae wonders, rather surprised. He never thought he’d hear Joonmyun say that. Joonmyun looks startled, then laughs.

“No, no. I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he says. “Yejoon caused me so much anxiety already and he’s not even a year old yet.”

“You’re a great father, Joonmyun. The first kid is the hardest. Honestly, after the newborn stage, having two is easier than one. They play with each other, and the older kid helps out with the younger one. It’s also way less stressful with the second kid because you’re more experienced. It’d probably be good for you,” he says, grinning when Joonmyun stares at him like he’s lost his mind.

“One is enough,” Joonmyun mumbles, but he keeps looking at Mari with soft eyes.

“Don’t worry so much about it. Just let things happen,” Jongdae advises. Joonmyun looks at him with raised eyebrows.

“Just let things happen sounds like horrible advice.” Jongdae snorts loudly and Mari moves slightly in his arms at the sound. He looks down at her with bated breath but she settles back in her sleep unbothered. When he turns to Joonmyun again, he sends the other man a mischievous smile.

“I’m sure you know what I mean.” He wiggles his eyebrows and cackles when Joonmyun flushes scarlet.

\---

“Please Kyungsoo,” Jongin begs, undeterred by Kyungsoo scowling at him as he clasps his hands in a begging position. “Just ask him. Just one little question.”

Kyungsoo pokes Jongin’s forehead, making him yelp. “How old are you?” he asks.

“I know, I’m an adult and I can ask him myself and I have, Kyungsoo, but he’s being an asshole and refusing to answer me so I need you to ask him for me.”

“Why don’t you ask Mikyung?” Kyungsoo suggests.

Jongin’s mouth drops open at the idea. Why the hell didn’t he think to ask Mikyung before?

“Oh my god, you’re a genius,” he says, and dashes away, ignoring Kyungsoo rolling his eyes. He bounds up to Mikyung, who’s discussing with Minseok about getting Nayoung and Eunbi a surfing lesson tomorrow. Jongin doesn’t really care about the whole surfing thing, he had sucked even with Yoochun’s careful guidance.

“Hi Jongin!” Mikyung says when she notices him. She’s smiling, her tanned skin glowing in the sunset light. Jongin points to the ring on Mikyung’s finger.

“Did you and Sehun secretly get married without my knowledge?” he asks bluntly. Mikyung widens her eyes and looks down to follow his finger to stare at her own ring. Then she bursts out in laughter.

“No,” she says. “Not yet.”

Jongin looks at her sharply, but Mikyung turns back to her conversation with Minseok, starting exactly where she’d left off. Jongin wonders if the pair of them have some conspiracy against him, the way they’re being so close-lipped about the whole thing. Mikyung said not yet, so the ring has to be an engagement ring. But when did Sehun propose? He hasn’t spoken of marriage in years, so what suddenly changed his heart?

Jongin looks around the beach for his best friend. Now he knows the truth, maybe Sehun will finally stop being such a tease and actually give him some details.

\---

The water splashes cold on their skin as they run into the water. Chanyeol dives under a wave and as he surfaces, he finds that his boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. Confused, he gets his footing on the soft sand and looks around. He’d dared Yeonseok to a sunset swim, not sure he’d actually agree to it, but now he’s standing in ocean water reaching his belly button and his boyfriend has just disappeared. Chanyeol doesn’t get to think before his feet are yanked from under him and he splashes back in the water, spluttering as he fights his way to the surface. When he finally gets the water away from his eyes, he watches his boyfriend laugh from a meter away. He looks so carefree, like nothing in the world can hurt them. A person looking in from outside has no reason to see them as more than friends, but Chanyeol knows the smile on Yeonseok’s lips isn’t because they’re passing as friends, but rather because they’re here together. He looks stunning when he’s laughing, every concern erased from the creases in his forehead. Chanyeol swims towards him.

“Totally unfair,” he tells Yeonseok when he gets close enough but Yeonseok just shrugs his shoulders.

“Like you wouldn’t have done the same,” he laughs and Chanyeol has to agree. He probably would have. Chanyeol reaches out to run his hand over Yeonseok’s lower back as he finds his footing on the ocean floor again and hidden by the water he slips his hand under Yeonseok’s shirt and caresses his bare skin. Yeonseok sends him a smile.

“We should go on vacation overseas again,” he says. Chanyeol nods. They should. He wants to swim in oceans without having to worry about kissing Yeonseok. Right now, there is nothing he wants more than to kiss his boyfriend but he isn’t going to ruin anything by drawing unwanted attention to them. There are still other people on the beach and Chanyeol knows all too well that not everybody reacts positively to their sexuality. Standing in the water, caressing his boyfriend hidden by the water, makes it very hard to prevent himself from leaning over and kiss him. He stays put, though, lets the water hide their affections. A few minutes later, a shiver runs down Chanyeol’s spine and he watches Yeonseok as he slides into the water, hoping to soak up a little of the heat of the water now that the air suddenly cools down around them. Chanyeol goes up to his neck again too, letting the water hide them as he wraps his arms around Yeonseok and presses them close.

“What are you doing?” Yeonseok whispers.

“Stealing body heat,” Chanyeol replies. Yeonseok glances at the beach, then presses a quick peck to Chanyeol’s lips, drawing back immediately and smiling.

“Nobody was looking,” he says in response to Chanyeol’s raised eyebrow.

Chanyeol smiles, then shivers in the cold water.

“It’s too cold, let’s get out before we freeze,” he says and reaches over to pull Yeonseok up and out of the water so they can walk back towards the beach again.

\---

The sky has turned dark blue, littered with stars and a new moon. Minseok rummages through the back of his car for jackets for his daughters so they won’t get cold when someone comes up behind him. He whacks his head against the doorframe as he straightens up too quickly and winces, rubbing his head. Eunsook makes a concerned noise behind him.

“That sounded painful,” she says, stepping forward to part his hair gently and inspect the bumped place. Minseok flushes, heat creeping into his cheeks and he’s glad he’s staring at the concrete parking lot and not at her.

“It’s nothing,” he tells her, but she ignores him, continuing to check for any cuts. Her soft hands are trailing through his hair and it sends tingles down his spine. It’s friendly, he repeats over and over in his mind. He got hurt, she’s a doctor and she’s making sure there’s no damage. When her hands leave his scalp it sends another set of tingles down his spine. She smiles at him when he looks up and gets eye contact with her.

“Be careful,” she says and takes Eunbi’s jacket from his hands. “Let’s head back.” Minseok nods, dumbfounded. It’s like her smile has eliminated all words and there’s nothing more he can say, and he wonders briefly if he’s given himself a concussion, because it feels like her fingers have turned his brain to mush.

He closes the door and they walk back towards the party. It’s a lot more subdued now. The young children have been put to sleep and silence and serenity has settled, most people clustered around the lights on the picnic tables. Eunsook stops a few meters from the party, far enough away to still have some privacy and Minseok looks at her like he’s spellbound.

“Thanks for bringing me,” she tells him in a soft voice, almost a whisper but not quite. “Your friends are really nice.”

“It’s been my pleasure,” Minseok says and means every word of it. His friends are great, but he can’t help thinking it wouldn’t have been quite so enjoyable without her there. She sends him one of those magical smiles again before she continues on towards the party and gives Eunbi her jacket. Minseok watches, feeling strange. He cannot remember feeling so...well, attracted to a person, since…

It’s platonic, he tells himself firmly, and goes to give Nayoung her jacket.

\---

Sehun lets go of Jongin with a smile. Everybody else has left the party, either gone back to their hotels to sleep or making the drive back to Seoul tonight. Jongin looks tired, but so relaxed and happy, and Sehun loves the look on him. After so long, after so many worries, watching Jongin completely comfortable in his own skin and smiling next to Sohee is everything he’s wished for his best friend.

“Thanks for coming down,” he says sincerely.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jongin says and pulls Sehun back into another hug. “I miss you at work, but you won’t ever get rid of me. I’ll be here to annoy you every weekend I’m off, and if you ever want to come up to Seoul for a visit you can stay with me.” Sehun smiles against Jongin’s shoulder. “Everything will work out at the new clinic, just give it a few more weeks,” Jongin continues.

“I know,” Sehun says quietly. He lets go of Jongin and they grin at each other before finally waving goodbye.

As Sohee and Jongin leave towards the parking lot and their car, Sehun turns to Mikyung. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into another hug. She sighs in his embrace and leans her head on his chest.

“Thank you,” he whispers into her hair and Mikyung pulls away and looks up at him. He’s smiling down at her. “This day has been perfect.” She chuckles but nods.

“It has. Thank you too.” Sehun blinks in surprise and tilts his head.

“What for?” He hasn’t done anything today other than grill meat. That’s not an unusual occurrence, though. He did that when they lived in Seoul too. Having the party was her idea, inviting his friends from Seoul to Busan to see him was her idea too. Mikyung links their hands.

“For being you,” she answers and Sehun snorts.

“That is incredibly cheesy,” he teases her and Mikyung glares up at him before he leans down to kiss her. She breaks free of the kiss to roll her eyes.

“I can’t believe I got engaged to you,” she tells him and Sehun laughs.

“No take backs!” he says, and she shuts him up with another kiss. The moon shines down on them as the water laps at the beach, and they’re all alone in the place that is theirs to be.


	37. Author's Interview + Season 2

Hi guys! Thank you for following us and our nine amazing doctors for an entire year. Neither of us had expected it to be anything like this long, but it’s been an incredible journey. We’ve prepared a little interview for you down below so you can learn some of our favourite things writing this fic, as well as some bonus content like K-drama cast and OST.

Once again, thank you so much. All your love and support is amazing!

With love,

Minji & Michan xoxo

* * *

## Interview with the authors

**Q: Who is your EXO bias?**

**Minji:** My EXO bias is without a shadow of a doubt Minseok! He’s held that title since MAMA, even before I was an EXO-L, and I don’t think he’ll ever lose it. I didn’t become an actual fan until Miracles in December, but Minseok just caught my attention from the beginning. The members that most often try to biaswreck me are Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae but they’re never really close to robbing Minseok of the title as bias. The gap is just too big, lol.

 **Michan:** Kim Jongdae! I came to the EXO fandom around 2015 after watching his and Baekhyun’s legendary duo appearance on Immortal Songs. I’d enjoyed Big Bang’s more hip hop/r’n’b style for a year or so, but hadn’t gotten much further into K-pop. I was stunned to see idols sing so well with such excellent technique (both of them are truly incredible in that appearance, but Jongdae’s tone, power, expression, and vocal mixing blew me away), and it’s thanks to him that I started listening to EXO. Ever since then I’ve only loved him more and though Baekhyun and Sehun regularly try to bias-wreck me, they never QUITE succeed :3

**Q: How did you come up with the story and how did co-writing work?**

**Minji:** The original vision was mine. Years ago I sat down and assigned every EXO-member the medical field I’d think they’d fit well into - which is really how they came by their fields in this story. I found it again at one point and started thinking of how to develop it into a story. That’s when I made a character-chart of their age, their families and their dilemma. I knew I wanted it to be realistic and I knew it didn’t necessarily have to be traumatic for every character. And then … nothing happened. I was really excited about the characters, but writing never really seemed to flow until I decided to ask for a co-writer in a blogpost on AFF. Luckily for me, Michan was interested in writing with me!! We shared ideas, my initial thoughts and everything she came up with too and we were rolling~ I’m not sure exactly what I imagined this story to be when I created the characters back then, but they came alive exactly how I imagined and blossomed into everything that is Hospital 365. I owe this story to Michan, really.

 **Michan:** It was kind of serendipitous that I read Minji’s blog post asking for a co-author, because I very rarely look at the blogs, but somehow I looked at this one and was immediately intrigued! Though I’d never co-authored before and wasn’t sure exactly how it would work, we’ve been friends online since 2015 and have met in real life twice to travel together, so I was confident we’d be able to communicate well. It was so exciting discussing everything with Minji and fleshing out the original framework of her basic ideas. I’m a total angst addict, where Minji prefers to write fluff, so we balanced really well throughout writing this. We wrote using a shared Google doc and several planning docs, and discussed ideas and writing assignments over Line. Generally we each took a character per chapter, but a few times we crossed over, working on situations we’re stronger on.

**Q: What scenario in the story did you disagree on the most?**

**Minji:** We definitely disagreed on how to go about the joint therapy session a lot. We agreed it was a very important scene to Minseok’s character development, but we feel very differently about Jangmi and it took some comments and edits to get the result we have today.

 **Michan:** Joint therapy took much discussion indeed! I was mainly in charge of writing that chapter and I found it hard to get my head around the idea that Jangmi wouldn’t show any understanding towards Minseok’s PTSD even after she found out. The fact that she took his mental illness as him trying to make excuses was really difficult for me. I guess I’m an idealist and I wanted her to show some understanding towards him. It was also a little painful for me personally to be confronted with the fact that our actions during mental illness may never be understood or forgiven. I am happy with the finished chapter though, because I think we stayed truer to her character than how I originally wrote it, even if the idealist in me was denied a happier outcome.

**Q: Whose specialty took up most research to write and which was the easiest?**

**Minji:** For me, the specialty that took up most research was actually Yixing’s - oncology. It isn’t because cancer is a difficult disease to understand on a purely scientific level and I meet a lot of cancer patients at work, but still - it took a lot for me to write the consultations. What goes on in a consultation, how do you make it seem interesting and worthwhile without taking away all the excitement - and still keep it real? Even Chanyeol and Sehun, although non-surgical specialties as well, were easier than Yixing’s oncology.

The easiest one has to be Kyungsoo. Even though he’s also a non-surgical specialty, I work as an x-ray tech in a Radiology department at a hospital and that made his job very easy to write. A lot of the medicine I wrote for Kyungsoo was rooted in everyday life such as ED residents not quite understanding what the hell a radiologist actually does, heh.

 **Michan:** The most research for me was Jongdae’s obstetric surgery situations, though that’s mainly because I wrote him the most, so I had to find quite a few different and interesting situations for him! Luckily I’m a medical writer by profession (I write clinical guidelines, procedures and protocols for hospitals and general practice) so I have access to detailed surgical guidelines and medical research over a multitude of specialties. The easiest would be Sehun, because there’s no surgery involved, and the guidelines are fairly straightforward for dermatological procedures such as punch biopsies.

**Q: What medical case do you like best? Which emergency and which non-emergency?**

**Minji:** My favorite emergency case is Minseok’s toxoplasmosis patient in chapter five. As a cat owner working in the medical field, I’ve always found it a little interesting. Getting to really dig deep into my research and write toxoplasmosis was a lot of fun! As for non-emergency, I still think Sooyoung is my favourite patient, although I, strangely enough, managed to develop a little sympathy for Mr. Lee at the end. He’s an interesting patient and character.

 **Michan:** My favourite emergency is the trauma victim in chapter 3, where Joonmyuun and Zitao have to cooperate about whether to treat the brain or heart injury first, and then Joonmyun’s emergency thoracotomy with Minseok. This was based off a real case study and I think it gives some insight into the incredibly rapid and complex decisions medical staff must make in emergency situations. The aftermath, when Joonmyun has to go and talk to the victim’s parents whilst simultaneously hiding and coping with his own emotions over the traumatic situation, is something I think is not often seen from the perspective of the surgeon.

My favourite non-emergency is Baekhyun’s 8-year-old burns victim, Kang Minseo. I love the confidence she gained after her scalp graft, and how it helped Baekhyun realise that he has value and has made a huge difference to her life. I actually teared up right along with Baekhyun writing Minseo asking if she can give him a hug to say thank you :’)

**Q: Which character storyline belonged most to each of you and which did you play tennis with the most?**

**Minji:** Chanyeol’s storyline felt immediately within my comfort zone and I vibed with him and Yeonseok from the beginning. It just felt right to write that. In my opinion, we ping-ponged Joonmyun the most between us.

 **Michan:** I’m pretty sure I wrote every single one of Jongdae’s scenes, lol. I couldn’t give up my bias~ I also wrote a lot of Baekhyun and did most of his intense mental illness stuff (as the resident angst writer extraordinaire!). I agree that we switched up Joonmyun a lot, and also Sehun probably.

**Q: What aspects of the story are influenced by real life?**

**Minji:** Dr. Mae is inspired by a resident I met at my local ED after I was in a fight with my cat and needed some penicillin and a tetanus shot. The miscommunication between nurse and doctor really inspired me and since I also worked at the same hospital I knew the resident from “behind-the-scenes” as well. Her attitude was also partly inspired by a coworker I had at the same hospital. Although the “real” Dr. Mae never stole medication from the hospital, it was really cathartic for me to fire her through Minseok.

Like I also said earlier, a lot of Kyungsoo’s medicine is based off of my own experience at the local Radiology department talking to and working with radiologists. Many of the “useless” ED residents, demanding this and that, are a very real phenomenon.

The Halloween prank Sehun and Baekhyun play on Joonmyun is also inspired by real-life pranks, done by the orderlies at my local hospital a few years back. I was, thankfully, never on the receiving end of it, haha.

 **Michan:** The situation with Chief Heo is, sadly, based on real life. There’s a pretty appalling hidden camera video from a South Korean business in 2018, in which a senior staff member physically assaults a younger staff member by verbally abusing and repeatedly slapping them in an office full of other workers, all of whom never even look up from their computers. I wanted to bring light to the fact that such abuse does happen in some workplaces, perhaps more so in cultures with a strong social hierarchy and respect for seniors ingrained in work and social culture. If you’re curious, you can watch the video on YouTube here: [뉴스타파 - '몰카 제국의 황제’ 양진호...무차별 폭행 ‘충격과 공포'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JpX6oDCvHU), but be warned that it’s pretty shocking.

The way hospital management handled Jongdae and Jongin’s reporting of the situation is based on a real situation I went through. We used video evidence in the story situation, because in my situation it turned out that the same staff member had been previously reported twice by two separate staff members, but as there was no evidence, the senior management above my immediate boss hadn’t taken action. Thankfully I had kept evidence of disturbing emails, even though I wanted to delete them (as the previous staff had done), and the outcome was that the offender was fired and put on a police watchlist. Countries have different laws and companies have different policies, but regardless, if you’re ever in a similar situation or think you might be, do keep anything that might possibly back up your claims, it’s very important in case anything escalates.

**Q: Which chapter is your favourite and why?**

**Minji:** My favourite is chapter 19 (March 8th) where Yixing and Songmi learn of his azoospermia for the first time. I’ve always loved the story idea behind their storyline, it not being super traumatic or crazy angsty, but just - a really shitty situation. It’s one of those “it sucks”-moments. And it does suck. Yixing had to go through all that and then get into the accident at the same time, only enabling the nagging thoughts of “maybe not good enough” - double sucks.

And then, on top of all that, I love Chanyeol’s care in that chapter. His over-the-top panic of finding Baekhyun gone beyond help, Yeonseok’s exasperated annoyance with the small things even though he understands his boyfriend’s fear - and the realisation that this might be okay too, Chanyeol can stop hiding because the world isn’t going to suddenly collapse when it learns of his sexuality. There will still be Chanyeol and Yeonseok - and he’ll still have his friends and he’s just done hiding.

I also really love Chanyeol’s background story. It’s just cute. I love it.

 **Michan:** Chapter 27 (May 3rd) when the Chief Heo video is revealed. There’s such a lot of personal growth for both Jongdae and Jongin in that chapter. It’s a huge deal for Jongdae to realise his mistreatment, overcome years of childhood conditioning and Chief Heo’s manipulation of him, and have the courage to go to the HR team and tell them everything. Also for Jongin to go beyond his own trauma to help Jongdae, admit to HR that he’s the one being hit in the video, and to disclose his own history of abuse to Jongdae. They were both so brave in this chapter and I love how they supported each other through what was a very traumatic situation for both of them.

## About the characters

**Q: Which original character is your favourite and why?**

**Minji:** Let me first start with an honorable mention; Kim Yeonseok. I love everything that is Yeonseok. His calm, controlled demeanor that slots so well into Chanyeol’s enthusiastic puppy-like personality. The way he understands and trusts, even when he’s being thrust into maddening situations - and the way he lets go of his emotions when he’s safe with those he loves. He’s supported by his family and as such has never had anything else. It must’ve been frustrating for him to hide all those years, but even then, his love for Chanyeol never faltered, never grew into bitterness and he stood by his side as Chanyeol slowly grew into the confidence he needed to come out. I genuinely love Yeonseok. But he’s not my favorite OC-character.

That would be … Park Jangmi. Yes, I said it. The one that is so easy to hate, the one that is so full of bitterness and resentment that it’s practically impossible to not dislike her. I like her character the most.

I like Jangmi for the display of humanity she is. For the exact opposite of every other OC-character. Because she lost a son and a husband at the same time and grew bitter in between it all. She struggled to raise two young girls in the midst of her own grief and she was only able to stand on the sidelines as her husband withdrew and threw himself at work. She didn’t know of his PTSD and Minseok didn’t tell her at the time. She just stood there, hands full and heart broken and the only possible thing she could do to save herself from going crazy was blame him.

She made wrong decisions. She turned a blind eye to her own fault. She blamed her ex-husband for all the things she couldn’t do alone and for all the things she couldn’t change and she grew bitter. To the point where even the sight of her ex-husband caused her anger and hatred, forcing all those bitter thoughts to the front, envisioning how she was left behind - nobody ever fought for her. It was a losing battle against Minseok’s PTSD and even as she finally gave up on their marriage, she let him see his daughters.

She never spoke horribly of him in front of the girls. No doubt she talked horribly about him in front of friends and Jeongseok - but never the girls. For years, every time he showed up to take them, she bit her tongue and tried to trust him and for years, he let her down. For years she had to hold her girls as they cried as their father once again stood them up and for years she tried to convince them he loved them - even if she was unsure of the fact herself.

Jangmi is harsh on him. She’s at the end of her line when she calls him to remind him of his daughter's birthday. There are no more chances. There’s no doubt about how much she hates him at this point, hates his face and his guts to show up. If she could, I’m sure she would have decided never to let the girls see their father. To hell with him, that’s really where she was at. One last chance - and he finally finally took it.

There’s no more understanding left in her. I, personally, don’t blame her. I understand she’s unlikeable. I understand how it’s easy to view her as mean and too harsh on him. But the way I see her - she’s reacting so incredibly human given everything they’ve been through. Even if it’s reactions full of bitterness, resentment and hatred. Because that’s what humans become sometimes. Angry, bitter, full of hatred - and completely blind to their own faults. And I think that’s what I love about her character - that to me, she feels real. She’s not a cartoon villain (sort of like Nari) and she’s not a supporting, loving wife either. She’s mean, harsh, hurt and bitter - and most of all; human.

 **Michan:** I love Yeonseok too, for all the reasons Minji stated above! I also really like the workplace counsellor, Soomin, and the sensitive way she deals with Jongdae. She gets on his level immediately, sensing his difficulty in admitting that he needs help and making adjustments so that he’ll feel as safe as possible. She identifies the issues underlying what he initially asks for help with and gives him the opportunity to discuss them, without pushing him too far and risking losing him. Trust and sensitivity to an individual’s needs are so important in a therapeutic relationship and I think Soomin is exemplary in that.

**Q: What couple is your favourite and why?**

**Minji:** I have three favourite couples and that’s kinda cheating but I’m going to talk about all of them anyway, lol. I’m a broken record when I say Chanyeol and Yeonseok. So let’s not really talk about them. I just love them.

Next in line; Sehun and Mikyung. I love their relationship. It’s loving, but not over-the-top fluffy. It’s mature, even though they’re our youngest main characters (outside of the children). They prank each other but it’s all in good fun. They have the same humour, even if Mikyung would never agree to it if asked. There’s a lot of care, but none of it is overly cringey. She loves him in the small ways she nags him to please eat something that isn’t a piece of bread and he loves her back in the way he rolls his eyes as he prevents her from hurting herself. They’re sporty and enjoy the outdoors but also have no trouble lounging on the couch for an evening. They’re able to talk through the important topics and they’re able to voice their concerns without the other getting angry or upset. I just feel like there’s a crazy amount of maturity in their relationship, one that seems very befitting of Sehun - even if he’s a goof with his friends.

Third would be Yixing and Songmi. I think they’re adorable. The true fairytale couple, the sweet couple you really envy. They work together at the same hospital, but neither are phased by this. They don’t trip over their feet to get to the other, yet they would definitely prefer to leave and arrive together. There’s some practicality to their relationship, but also just - a ton of love. Songmi and Yixing are, to me, like the couple that never really falls out of love no matter how many years they’ve been together. They love each other so deeply that even when things get rough, they’re able to fluff it up. They stand by each other, in sickness and health and everything in between and in their eyes, there will always be that spark of pure adoration, a simple love that never falters.

 **Michan:** I’m ace-aro (like Kyungsoo!) and it’s not always easy for me to get my head into the romance space, so I tend to prefer relationships that aren’t super fluffy or passionate, but more like loving friendship. So my favourite couple are Ahreum and Jongdae! They have such a solid relationship, the kind of lifelong partners with a love that’s completely comfortable and doesn’t rely on passion. Ahreum is so understanding of Jongdae when he’s trying to protect her by not opening up to her about his struggles - she knows him so well that she understands it’s just part of who he is, and she does her best to help him without getting frustrated at him or stressing him out more. Their relationship is true unconditional love to me.

**Q: What main character are you most proud of and why?**

**Minji:** I think I’m most proud of Sehun, really. I love all their development arcs, but I’m really proud of Sehun for recognizing the problem and instead of jumping head-first into some ridiculous plan that was bound to fail, he took a deep breath and explored his options. I just feel really proud of how much he’s opened up about his loneliness, even though loneliness can sometimes feel like such a small problem. Loneliness is so hard and there were so many “excuses” he could’ve given himself for feeling the way he did; but he just ... didn’t. He took it in stride, then found a solution and worked towards it. I’m not sure I can really explain it eloquently but I’m really proud of Sehun with the way he’s handled everything that’s been thrown at him this year.

 **Michan:** If it’s proud of the person, I am so proud of Jongin! Sohee was his first relationship since Minah, and the only healthy relationship he’s had, and it took huge courage for him to overcome his bad history and take his first steps in a new relationship. He made amazing progress throughout the year, learned to trust Sohee enough to open up to her, and even found himself able to say the words “I love you” to her at the end of the year.

When it comes to the character aspect, as a writer, I think I’m most proud of Jongdae’s character. His first impression is that of a happy, well-adjusted person, a perfect dad, husband, friend and doctor, but the cracks soon begin to show when he’s put to the test, as his buried insecurities rise to the surface. There’s a lot of subtleties behind his character and why he acts and responds to situations the way he does, and we haven’t gone into all of them in depth yet, so I’m really looking forward to working on that more.

**Q: What main character development are you most proud of and why?**

**Minji:** Baekhyun’s character development is something I’m really proud of. It’s not that his journey necessarily is over, there’re still therapy sessions to attend to and things to work through - but from the beginning of the year in which everything was fine to going so low life wasn’t worth living in the span of … well, a couple of months really and to now be able to see some light ahead a year after. Baekhyun reimagined himself and his identity with help from friends and professionals and I’m so proud of his entire character arc and development.

 **Michan:** Minseok, I think. A lot of them had great developments, but Minseok overcame so much over the course of the year, started therapy (really a huge thing to do!) and really is turning his life around.

## Fun stuff!

**Q: If this story was to be made into a K-drama, who would you cast (without casting EXO as themselves)?**

A: A star-studded cast uwu

****

**Q: What OST would you make for this story?**

**YouTube playlist:** [Hospital 365 OST](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXC4sT6E9ZSFa6eAV9uEHaPpxFF7a6uPX)

 **Whole fic:**[ Hand](https://youtu.be/ss-ADSdv-7g) \- Chanyeol

**Relationships:**

Jongin x Sohee:[ Flowering](https://youtu.be/WQdFA55hT80) \- LUCY,[ All of Me](https://youtu.be/9xkF6GKP_AM) \- Chanyeol cover project

Sehun x Mikyung:[ Beautiful Beautiful](https://youtu.be/An0KNf70lHE) \- Punch

Chanyeol x Yeonseok:[ Pansy](https://youtu.be/T271Va9sSA8) \- Taemin

Yixing x Songmi:[ Dreaming](https://youtu.be/9uzq7YhchJA) \- BTOB

Minseok x Eunsook:[ Day 1](https://youtu.be/9KVVPxexz1c) \- K.Will

Jongdae x Ahreum:[ Sleeping Beauty](https://youtu.be/LIPdS3j4EeM) \- End of the World x Epik High

Joonmyun x Yejin:[ Always Be Here](https://youtu.be/YB9BZTvqgkE) \- Jung Jin Woo

Baekhyun x Lu Han:[ Space Travel](https://youtu.be/5UWfK3iZHDg) \- Monogram

**Scenarios and plot arcs:**

Baekhyun’s breakup:[ Autumn Sleeves](https://youtu.be/nUr8HhBGovQ) \- Kyuhyun

Jongin’s abuse plot arc:[ Amor Fati](https://youtu.be/p7f2fdJm1oQ) \- Epik High

Minseok’s therapy plot arc:[ Better Man](https://youtu.be/V33yN2ld3ew) \- Taemin

Sehun missing Mikyung:[ Walk](https://youtu.be/Sal3uFsaEks) \- B.A.P

Scenarios related to Ilsung’s death:[ Someday the Boy](https://youtu.be/xYvO_mYfOfk) \- Kim Feel

Baekhyun’s recovery:[ Star](https://youtu.be/BoC-UghX3Ck) \- Buzz

Chanyeol’s plot arc:[ Rainfall](https://youtu.be/vwUSIiz0-SA) \- Chen

Jongdae's work issues:[ On My Own](https://youtu.be/hgKREAB2R8M) \- Amber

## Season 2

We loved writing this story and as sad as we are to put the completed label on this, as excited are we to announce that we’re not quite done yet.

There’s still so much to explore for our characters and we can’t bear to leave this AU yet!

So please head over and subscribe to [Hospital 365: Season 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29422215/chapters/72278820)!

[ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29422215/chapters/72278820)


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